


Let Ships Collide

by Schokoshrimp



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Episode Fix-It: s02e13 Mizumono, Gen, Hannigram - Freeform, M/M, Murder Family, Murder Husbands, Post-Episode: s02e13 Mizumono, alternative for mizumono but otherwise canon compliant, basically everything's the same except Hannibal didn't smell Freddie on Will, not so happy murder family by the way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-03-16 05:40:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3476552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schokoshrimp/pseuds/Schokoshrimp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal never realizes Freddie is alive, but Will, not being able to choose sides, still comes too late for Alana and Jack. After having discovered that Abigail lives, he finds himself a part of Hannibal's escape and follows along because he wants to save her. They make their way through France to a cabin in southern Germany that Hannibal owns to spend a summer there, laying low. It's a time and place much happier than Will hoped, bringing closeness to a family that is splitting at the seams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a line from one of my favorite songs at the moment, "Open Water Reckless Fishes" by Squalloscope.

  
Du schlugst die Augen auf - ich seh mein Dunkel leben.  
Ich seh ihm auf den Grund:  
auch da ists mein und lebt.

Setzt solches über? Und erwacht dabei?  
Wes Licht folgt auf dem Fuß mir,  
daß sich ein Ferge fand?

 

 

 

You opened your eyes - I saw my darkness live.   
I see through it down to the bed;   
there too it is mine and lives. 

Is that a ferry? Which, crossing, awakens?   
Whose light can it be at my heels   
for a boatman to appear? 

 

\-- Paul Celan, "Von Dunkel zu Dunkel" ([From Darkness to Darkness](http://www.blue-lights.com/dl_writing/poetry/celan02.html))

 

 

 

 

 

 

The steak on Will's platter is of a rich brown with a crisp outside, rosy tender inside—and vaguely in the shape of an ear. Peas line its edge above a cushion of mashed potatoes that is accented by two drops of red sauce. Will lifts his fork, points it at the peas, points it at the puree, takes up his knife to aims both at the steak, then lowers them back onto the plastic table. 

His gaze flits over to Hannibal, who is sitting across the aisle, cutting into his steak like a surgeon into the soft belly fat of his patient. Hannibal's face displays neither disdain nor pleasure as he puts the meat into his mouth. Before Will can turn back to his own meal, Hannibal looks up. After a glimpse at Will's plate, he asks,

"You don't like it?"

Will hesitates. "I honestly don't know. Haven't tried it."

"You should. It's one of the better meals I have eaten on a plane."

Will doesn't know how to answer, because he is certain no food will come into the vicinity of his mouth in the near future, so he just smiles. Hannibal seems to accept that reply and engages again with the steak. 

"Maybe you should have tried the vegetarian option. It's really good, too. It somehow tastes Asian—I think there's soy sauce in the cabbage," Abigail says to Will's right; the spacious seats in first class run in rows of two and Abigail's and Will's are a pair. From the corner of his eye he can see that she is holding up something on her fork; something he cannot identify since it hovers in the margin of his vision.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah! Do you want to try?" The question rises to a single syllable of laughter. 

"Thanks, but I don't really feel like eating."

She snorts. "Alright. More for me!"

Again at the brink of his vision, Abigail shifts in her seat. Her orange scarf merges with the strip of sky in the window behind her. The conversation ceases and Will stares at his hands clamped around the edge of his table. Next to them, Abigail's fingers reach for her glass, then take back the fork to impale ( _now_ he can see it clearly) a green blob of cabbage. It doesn't look very appetizing, but then, nothing does. The cabbage is shoveled upwards, where Will stops tracking it. There's a small speck of sauce on her left middle finger as her hand comes back down. She hasn't noticed it. Her hand is so small around the fork, white against it. White against brown. Hands against a coat as Abigail shoves Alana out the window. The fabric spreads like bat-wings in the air. Her back collides with the pavement like a body collides with stone: with blood and broken bones. He saw (imagined) how it all happened with one glimpse of her on the ground.

Will blinks. Abigail's plate is empty. His is untouched.

Shaking his head, he murmurs, "Do you want my peas?"

Abigail doesn't answer. He waits, then tries again. "Do you want my peas? I'm not going to eat them." As there is again no reaction, he dares a look at her (hand, arm, shoulder, tips of hair). She is leaning against the window. Frowning, he briefly touches her elbow.

"Huh?" She turns. He looks at the lining of her blouse. 

"I asked you if you wanted my peas. Were you asleep?"

"No."

"Okay."

"It's loud in here and I—you have to speak up."

Will doesn't reply. He feels her eyes latch onto his face. 

"You know," she says, quieter. "I was aware you have problems with looking at eyes, but ears, too?"

"Sorry."

"It's not that bad, really. And I wear my hair in front of it. You shouldn't be able to see much."

"I don't—it's not very visible," Will says, eyes tentatively skimming the region where her shoulder ends and hair starts. 

"You're not even looking."

So he forces himself. Quick, like touching the top of a hot stove. But he sees clearly the shadow of skin in a small gap in her hair: red, dark. It is not more than a centimeter for less than a second, still the image grows like an ulcer: from redness to ridges in the skin to the horrible deformity of the gaping, exposed ear canal. 

He says, "It's okay, you can't see anything."

"Good." She smiles. Her eyes are blue and young and, to him, born only yesterday. Her rebirth makes the missing of an ear seem negligible—at least if he's not forced to look. 

"And yes," she says, "I want your peas.  _Please._ "

Will nods, swapping their plates and Abigail digs in immediately. As his eyes trace the food, take in the form of the meat, the curve of it, the  _ear_ ; the nausea he has barely kept down rises in his throat. He gets up wordlessly and wanders off to the bathroom. Fortunately, there is no one inside, so he enters. This bathroom isn't that different from economy: sterile, loud, uncomfortable, only with more room to incapacitate those qualities. But when you're throwing up, it doesn't matter where you are. Hunched over the toilet, he spits out bile and juice—there's nothing else in his stomach.

The blood should matter more, he thinks. Jack's and Alana's. He thinks he might add his own to their's if only he manages to turn himself inside out by vomiting up his intestines. This could have gone differently, if he weren't such a scaredy-cat, unable to plan ahead and afraid to make decisions. He's here now because Hannibal presented Abigail to him last minute and believes that Will is as loyal as his dogs (Oh, the dogs, "Don't worry, Will, I have already contacted wonderful new owners," that now miss the vastness of the Virginia fields), because he thinks Freddie Lounds is a dead display of power and destruction. Had he known Abigail was still alive, he'd have kept Jack and Alana out of this—she wouldn't have to have another potential death beneath her nails. He'd have chosen a side. He likes to believe it would have been a different one. 

Will grabs some of the gray, thin toilet paper to wipe his mouth. He flushes the toilet and watches the water disappear with an ear-numbing hiss. Without the Encephalitis, he doesn't see it as a pool of blood, but his brain remembers these images and layers them over reality like the half-dark shadow of leaves. 

The last thing he does before willing himself to go back to his seat is pull out his new passport. It's not like there's much he has to memorize from it, but he likes to look at his picture next to his new name—Alexander Young—as not to flinch when someone calls him by it. He doesn't know if Hannibal chose the name, or Abigail's (Eve Miller) or his own (Thomas Miller), but he has made Abigail his daughter. For convenience's sake. Still there is an air of careful mistrust to it, as if there were no ties for Will to break if he left. He knows he can't.

Will puts the passport back into his pocket and leaves the bathroom. There's already someone waiting in front of it. He ducks his head and slips past them, squeezes through the aisle and sits back down on his seat. Neither of the other two acknowledge him. Abigail is listening to something on her phone, wearing big headphones. Relieved that they hide her wound completely, he steals a few glances at her from the corner of his eye. She doesn't notice him, or pretends not to. He is content with that for the moment; he'll get the chance to talk to her later. 

He tilts his head back against the seat and stands in a river. He's alone there. Feeling the cool spring air on his skin, he takes out his fishing gear. It's good that the fish don't bite that often here—he still has six hours left to fill. 


	2. Chapter 2

When they touch down in France, Will is tired, but his simmering fear of getting caught at Immigrations is keeping him awake. He knows how lengthy the procedure can be for Europeans entering America, so he now frets at the possibility of being scrutinized as well, although it is unlikely that their names are on the big lists just yet. Will's fear rarely cares about facts.

They file out of the plane slowly with the other passengers and make their way through many wide hallways and over long strips of moving walkways. The hall with the immigration counters is surprisingly empty—the small queue before the five desks moves forward quickly. As they line up at its end, Hannibal says with a nod, "French people don't like bureaucracy, do you see? They merely glance at the passports. I've been to this airport several times and they have always been like this." He chuckles. Will doesn't find this particularly funny, but it relieves him. And really, when they stand before the officer, he greets, glances, smiles—and waves them through. Passport clutched tightly, Will exhales until the darkness behind his lids starts sparking. 

After having waited for aeons for their luggage, they leave the airport and step out into the Parisian evening. It is cool and noisy, busy. They take a taxi; Hannibal rides shotgun, immediately engaging the driver in a French conversation, while Will and Abigail sit in the back. Will's eyelids are made of sandstone, but he spends his full concentration on trying to keep them up. He hasn't slept a single minute during the flight. 

Paris' early evening traffic is stagnant; cars honk and cross intersections haphazardly; the local people hurry along, unafraid of the cars, while tourists saunter. Will knows that Paris isn't the stage for idyll and romance, pink sunsets and the air of early summer, but a city that's crude like every other metropolis—still, he is surprised by the clamor of the cars and the dirty sidewalks. He doesn't know how long it takes them to the hotel, but when they arrive, he feels nauseous and ready to great Paris with the contents of his bowels. Hannibal pays for the taxi, then helps Abigail out of the car and takes Will's arm with a steady and almost worried grip. 

It's not until they are standing in front of the receptionist's desk that Will remembers to take a look at the hotel Hannibal has chosen. It is fairly small, in an old building that is wonderfully French but not very modern, with gold-rimmed paintings on the walls and a key rack with three times six keys. The carpet beneath Will's feet feels soft, even through his shoes, and a smell of something salty wafts over to him—it's almost time for dinner. Will's throat constricts.

"Mister."

Oh? He lifts his head. The receptionist is staring at him expectantly. 

"Your ID," she says, her accent audible even in such a short sentence. 

"Sorry, yes." 

He fumbles in his pocket for the passport and pulls it out. As he glances at it before handing it over, it seems startlingly fake to him—like a child's attempt at drawing a ten dollar bill to buy ice-cream. The plastic looks cheap, the picture lopsided and the name—Alexander Young—like the name of a cartoon character. Then the impression is gone and after a moment of a heavily beating heart, the receptionist puts the passport down. "Thank you, Mister Young," she says.

 

 

 

They have three separate rooms, all on the first floor. Abigail's is at the end of the corridor, while Will's and Hannibal's frame it in a right angle. As quickly as possible, Will opens his room with the old-fashioned key to drop off his luggage, not deigning it a look, because he needs to catch Hannibal before he leaves. They are to stay one night in the hotel, before taking a car tomorrow to drive east to the German border. There is a lot Hannibal needs to take care of; Will knows that it will probably take the whole night, but he needs to speak to him. It has only been half a day since he learned that Abigail is alive, since he, from the tightrope between Jack's moral good and Hannibal's emotional sympathy, jumped straight for his own personal consolation. It feels as if in the matter of a few hours he has sunk into a parallel life. He can't just bury this.

As the door closes behind him, he catches Hannibal with sunglasses and a hat turning for the stairs.

"Wait," he calls after him.

"I don't have a lot of time, Will; there are important matters to be settled."

"I need to talk to you."

Hannibal turns around, but remains near the stairs. "It will have to wait. We'll have a few hours in the morning before leaving; I will explain our procedure to you, then. You are tired, Will. You haven't slept. Go to bed."

"No, no, it's not about that. Don't you think you owe me an answer to the," he searches, "piece of china that reappeared with a _chink_?" After fear, fatigue is number two on the list of things that make Will rude. He can see Hannibal's jaw working—it only infuriates Will more. 

"This is not the place to talk and you are aware of that. I am appealing to your better judgement. I know you are able to keep your emotional distress under your control until the opportunity of addressing it arises. I promise you that it will."

Hannibal's face beneath the dark glasses doesn't betray his intention. He has arranged his whole body to give off an air of neutrality. Still, Will can't help but recognize that Hannibal is right, so he nods in response.

"See you tomorrow, then," he says, frustration heavy in his voice.

"Yes." Hannibal smiles, and to Will's surprise, crosses the few meters separating them, feet like a cat's on the carpet. He puts a hand on Will's shoulder, squeezing it. "I cannot tell you how glad I am that the three of us are here, together," he says.

Will lowers his gaze and waits for the weight of Hannibal's hand to lift and for the sound of his footsteps to subside at the end of the corridor. Once he's gone, Will retreats to his room and glances at his reflection in the bathroom mirror (face gaunt, hair disheveled). There are dark sweat stains in his shirt at the armpits, so he strips and sifts through his luggage for a fresh one. (Hannibal packed it in Will's absence, without his knowledge. He registers the shadow of distaste at the thought of Hannibal going through his stuff, but dispels it. He is grateful for Hannibal's care.) 

With the new, ironed shirt on, he makes for Abigail's room. He knocks. Her muffled voice answers him and he enters.

Abigail is sitting on her bed wearing sweats and a tank-top, a book in her lap. Her hair is up in a messy bun, but the crater of her left side is turned away from him. 

"Hey," Will says, hovering near the door.

She smiles, looking double as tired as Will feels. "What is it?" She leans back onto the pillow. There is an empty wrapper of chocolate on it—a gift from the hotel. She has eaten it. 

"How are you feeling?" he asks.

"Tired. The jet lag's really gotten to me. But it's half past seven, I guess that's early enough to sleep. Did you adjust your watch yet?"

"No… Look, Abigail…" Will's eyes search the room. He likes to find an object he can fixate on during a conversation, something to touch again and again with his eyes when words get difficult. There is a vase with a single flower on the dark-wooden desk, a lamp with tassels over the bed. His gaze falls onto the nightstand, where a small plush tiger sits leaned against the lamp. Will frowns. "Is that from your dad?" He nods at the tiger.

"Oh, that? No. I don't really keep things from my dad. I don't need a reminder of who he was. Hannibal gave it to me, while I was… staying with him. He said it belonged to his sister."

Will steps into the room and pulls the chair out from the desk to sit, facing Abigail. "What happened? When you were with Hannibal?"

"I…" Her gaze drops to the flower-pattern on the duvet. "I got a new start. After everything that happened with my dad… and with you… I needed to leave that behind."

"But where were you all this time? In Hannibal's house? What did he do to you?"

"Nothing, really."

"Nothing? I think that what happened to your—to you—"

"Look, I don't want to talk about it now, okay? I'm tired. I was just about to go to bed when you came in."

Will rubs his hands over his face, then joins them as if in prayer and leans forward in the chair. "At the same time yesterday I thought you were dead, Abigail. I spent months believing that you were. It's—it's just been a few hours that you've been alive to me. It's like I was given a book with a bad ending to read and only now I found that I was missing the last page, you—I want to know what happened to you."

"To do what?"

"Nothing, just for myself. Closure."

She scoffs, eyes flitting up again. "You only want to know what Hannibal did, did _to_ me, what _happened_ to me, not what _I_ did."

"No, but I need to know it first, Abigail, what _he_ did. Tell me about what happened. Where did you stay? In his basement?"

"Sometimes." She cocks her head. "Sometimes not. He took care of me."

Will is exasperated, considers four different types of syndromes and conditions. He looks at her but doesn't see. He can't read if she's hiding her hatred for Hannibal to spare him or because the memories are too painful to revisit. 

"You and I both know what he is capable of, _see_ ," he gulps at the vision of her earless head, "how far he goes."

"You're one to talk."

Will's voice collapses for a moment, reestablishes itself. "I would never do that to you, Abigail. I'm not like Hannibal, not like _that_."

Her eyes shoot up, blue like ice at the caps and reflective as if lined with mirrors. "Still you came," she hisses.

He leaves then, hoping his face doesn't make him look like the hurt, forsaken dog he is; excusing himself with a sudden attack of fatigue, he stumbles back into his room. In the quiet of it, only the mumble of the Parisian cars reaching his ears and the faint clatter of dishes downstairs, the iron suit of his exhausted reality clamps shut around his flesh. He manages to shed his pants, then he's on the mattress. Face up, he's a snow angel in a flowerbed. Something is poking his head. It's the little wrapped chocolate. He pries it out of his curls and looks at it; it reads 'Bienvenue' in curvy letters. Slowly, he unwraps it. In the half-dark it looks almost black. He places it on his tongue, closing his mouth around its sweetness and, his eyes shutting to melting blood, he falls asleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the many kudos! I'm so happy. :)


	3. Chapter 3

When he wakes it is dark. He blinks his dry eyes a few times, but he isn't granted the confusion of not knowing where or who he is. He is Will Graham, he is in Paris, France, and he's awake because of his jet-lag, maybe, or because he's afraid of everything right now. The open curtains billow in front of the window—the draft is cool and smells like fun fairs and exhaust fumes. Glasses askew on his nose, Will rights them, then fumbles for the light switch of the bedside lamp. When it turns on, his eyes clamp shut for a moment, then he looks at his watch. 8:21. His forehead crumples. If he only slept an hour, why is it dark as coal outside? Oh yes. He didn't change his watch to Parisian time. He isn't at the height of his intellectual abilities. With fumbling, groggy fingers, he manages to get it right: 2:21. That's more like it. 

There's the taste of dead cat at the base of his tongue and plaque with the texture of his oldest undershirt on his teeth. After digging through his suitcase he finds a toothbrush and vigorously brushes his teeth. He drinks water straight from the faucet, then spits out three whole mouthfuls. Better. 

For a moment, he considers knocking on Hannibal's door to see if he's available for the urgent talk that is still itching  between Will's lips, but he immediately recognizes that he is too tired for sensible conversation and that Hannibal will most likely not be back until morning. So he paces the room, finds a French flyer about the museums in the vicinity, but doesn't understand anything except for the names of the artists. Next to it is the dinner-menu of the week—graciously also in English—and the snacks available for room service. He studies it for a while, eyes the 'two croissants with butter and jam' that he knows he can't get in the middle of the night anyway. His stomach rumbles, but he doesn't want to search his suitcase for something edible. Instead he walks over to the small, old TV on a side table in the corner and fetches the remote.

With the expectation that there won't be anything but French channels, he retreats to the bed. He switches the TV on. Flipping through thirty channels of speech (yelling, crooning, reporting, moaning, giggling) unintelligible to him, he drifts away to the memory of spending a week in Canada with his father. He felt estranged in that country that wasn't too far away from where he lived but where people spoke in riddles which seemed to exclude him on purpose. He had never been in a place before where English wasn't spoken. During that vacation, his father had to work—he knew a family from back when that wanted his help with their boat and was willing to pay more than he usually received—so Will spent a lot of the time alone in the hotel. The strangeness of the place seemed to be everywhere—to seep from the city through the walls into the hotel room. He got very homesick very quickly. And he remembers curling up on the bed with the TV on, finding through the thicket of French the only program in English (about football, which didn't interest him at all) and only being able to fall asleep by letting himself be deceived that he was, in fact, home.

Will doesn't have that luxury now. He is stuck on channel 14, a comedy with an obnoxious laughing track, while occasionally flipping to 15, the news. Actually, he is stuck on 15. But he is scared of what might come on, of seeing his own face there. Then again, the one thing he tries not to think of most, still needs to know just as much as he dreads it, is if Jack and Alana are alive. Fear lets Will's thumb push the CH- button, worry draws it up to CH+. He takes a trip over to the mini-bar, chooses an exorbitantly priced flask of whiskey (that he will refuse to let Hannibal pay), downs it as quickly as his empty stomach allows him. Then he turns on the news and puts the remote down. 

A woman babbles in French, a man sitting at her side, both their faces stern. Will doesn't get a single thing. At the bottom of the screen, a banner displays the breaking news. There's a catastrophe in Africa (Will understands '1500', 'Somalia', 'death'). As the banner slowly inches over to the left, his eyes grab and hold on to it, and then—his heart makes a jump, goes still for a second—he reads 'Baltimore'. He reads 'Hannibal Lecter'. He reads 'Will Graham'. 

He squeezes the pixels that make up the words with his gaze to try and press any sort of meaning from them, but they don't give him more than 'fugitive' and what he guesses is 'murder'. No mention of Alana or Jack. At least he doesn't see it. It might be right in front of him, the decision of life or death in those blurry words, yet he can't understand them. 

A shaky sigh hisses through Will's clenched teeth. Hannibal would know. He would understand as he understands everything, every goddamn language in the world. He would tell him. He would help him. 

Will switches the TV off. It's quiet again; he thinks he might be able to sleep. 

 

 

 

When he wakes once more, he is Alexander Young, a captain traveling on a sailboat over a waveless sea. The faint breeze from the mainland smells polluted but sweet and someone is knocking on the bow, speaking warmly to him. The voice puts him so at ease that he wants to lie down on the deck to press his face against the heated wood. 

The knocking intensifies and the dream is gone. It's Hannibal at his door. He's saying something about breakfast.

"I'm coming inside," he hears before he has the chance to act. The doorknob turns and there stands Hannibal in well-tailored pants and a shirt with two open buttons—less formal than his usual attire—, a plate in one hand, a glass of juice in the other. As Will's eyes make contact with the food, his stomach gives an embarrassingly loud rumble. 

"Good morning," Hannibal greets politely, but with one eyebrow on the verge of furrowing.

"Good morning. Sorry about my… state." He throws away the covers to get up. "Um, what time is it?"

"Half past six."

Will stands in boxers opposite Hannibal and eyes the food again. The long hours with only emptiness in his stomach are catching up to him. 

Before he can say anything, Hannibal asks, "Are you hungry?"

"Oh yes."

"Good. You didn't eat well yesterday, Will. No matter the stress and discomfort, a healthy diet is important. We have a long journey ahead of us today."

Will refrains from probing into it, trusting Hannibal to tell him their plan later on when they'll be with Abigail. "Did _you_ already eat?" he asks, because he doesn't want to seem too selfish.

"Yes, half an hour ago together with Abigail."

"She's already up?" He's scrambling into yesterday's pair of pants now. "Why didn't you wake me?"

"You needed every minute of sleep you could get."

Will is tempted to ask, 'And what about you?' as he looks back at Hannibal and sees the skin around his eyes, darkened and sagging, but stops himself. The answer would simply be, 'I am fine.'

"Anyway, thanks for bringing me breakfast," he says instead.

"My pleasure. It's from a small bakery that I used to frequent during my trips to Paris when I was younger. It's right behind the hotel. They make splendid croissants."

"Does look fantastic."

Hannibal nods and places plate and glass onto the desk. Meanwhile, Will has managed to pry a random shirt from his suitcase that he only realizes he is seeing for the first time as he tugs into his pants. (It's a nice shirt. The fabric feels much finer than he is used to.)

"I will join Abigail in my room now. Please come over in half an hour; we will discuss any further undertakings then. And, Will, once you've finished eating, make a change of your appearance, by which I mean," he says that with a humorous glint in his eyes, "make yourself harder to recognize on first glance."

Will nods. "I could use a shave, anyway."

"Good. I'll see you in half an hour then."

After Hannibal has left, Will realizes that it was stupid to dress in such a hurry. He hasn't even showered yet. One glance at the croissants later, though, and one touch—they are still warm and crisp on the outside—he decides hygiene got the short end of the stick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be in London next week, so I won't be able to update (not that this fic has any fixed schedule anyway haha). Just thought I'd let you know, also: sorry!
> 
> Edit: Thank you so much for 100 Kudos omg


	4. Chapter 4

Later, Will does shower, but only after devouring the croissants at a speed that is an affront to their taste. Hair still wet, he stands in front of the mirror and grabs his razor and shaving cream. Staring into mirrors can be dangerous for Will because with his thoughts unbound he tends to give his own face the empathy analysis. That's why he tries to concentrate on the strokes of the razor, tries to get every last hair. Once he's washed the cream off, he looks fresh and new—it's been years since he's seen his face bare. He looks young—ten years younger, he guesses. 

Dressed again, he's five minutes late and quickly crosses the corridor to knock on Hannibal's door. Abigail opens for him. Her face shines at him as she smiles and says, "Wow, you look like you're not older than twenty five!"

Will chuckles, self-consciously rubbing his smooth chin. As Abigail steps away from the door, he sees Hannibal at the desk near the window, an array of documents and a cardboard box in front of him. 

"Different enough?" Will asks with a sly look directed at him.

"Very different. And verynice." Hannibal sighs. "I will have to change my appearance, too. Last night, no hairdressers were open—at least none I would have let near me with a pair of scissors—so I bought a hair colorant. I am trying to figure out how this works."

Will sticks out his bottom lip. "You want to dye your hair _yourself_?"

"I am afraid so. This is a desperate measure."

"I'm gonna help you!" Abigail chimes in. She says to Will, "My mom used to dye her hair, or at least her hairline, when it came back gray. I did it for her more often than not 'cause it's really difficult doing it yourself."

Will manages a meek smile. The relaxed atmosphere between Hannibal and her repulses him, makes him wonder what methods he used to make her into such a pliant fawn.

"Hannibal, you need to put on an old shirt," Abigail says. "Hair-dye dyes everything—our old washing machine looks like cow-skin because of my mom's."

"Old shirts are not exactly my strong point."

"Then just take one of the towels from the hotel. We'll be gone in an hour anyway, won't we?"

Hannibal frowns. "That would be rude."

Shrugging, Abigail turns to Will. "Don't _you_ have any old shirts? You look like you do."

"Uh," Will makes. "Hannibal packed for me. Did you…?"

"I did take a few of your own shirts, which are of… lesser quality material, but I don't want to ask of you to use one of them only to soil it."

"Ah, no, no. You can have 'em. I'll get you one."

Will leaves the room while Hannibal thanks him profusely, grabs a green t-shirt he remembers smearing motor oil onto once (the stain is gone), and takes it back to the others.

"This okay?" he asks.

"Yes. Perfect. Thank you."

"I hope it'll fit."

"It might be a little tight, but it will be fine."

"Okay." Abigail picks up the stuff from the desk. "Let's go into the bathroom."

There, Hannibal changes into Will's ratty shirt, before Abigail sits him down on the rim of the bathtub. She takes a last look at the page with the instructions, then dumps all of the bottles into the sink. Putting on the plastic gloves, which are huge, she looks like a kid playing surgery for a moment. The bathroom is narrow, so Will stays in the doorframe—he feels expendable anyway—and watches Abigail expertly go about filling the big bottle with the contents of the smaller ones and shaking it. 

"I'll start now," she says, positioning the bottle's tip over Hannibal's head. "It'll be cold."

Hannibal smiles. "I will try not to punch you if it startles me."

"You better not."

Will cannot imagine Abigail voluntarily touching this man if it is not to strangle him. _That_ he can imagine perfectly fine: her, lowering the bottle as if to apply the colorant, but then quickly dropping it to grab his throat with both gloved hands and choke him, pushing him back so the back of his head hits the tiles and new color bleeds into his hair.  

Dark brown—the color of dried blood—drops as a fat blob of hair-dye onto the crown of Hannibal's head. He doesn't so much as twitch. Abigail starts applying more dye and spreads it from the top down along his bangs. Hannibal holds still and lets her work on him; even as she curls a strand around her finger or accidentally gets some dye onto his ear. Either Will is watching an animal trainer stick her head into the open maw of her tiger, or the tiger is waiting for the wind to turn to stalk his prey. It's fascinating. 

"I need to do the fringe now," Abigail says.

"Go ahead."

Hannibal tilts his head back and lets Abigail swipe his hair from his forehead, which is rimmed brown. The bottle is almost empty and Abigail shakes the last drops out. She massages everything into Hannibal's scalp before leaving him with a wet hairdo that looks startlingly akin to a turd.

"Done. We need to wait half an hour now. I'll keep track of the time." 

"Thank you." He sits up straight on the rim of the bathtub. "This certainly was a new experience. How do I look, Will?"

Will quickly dispels his idea about the turd. Actually, it's outrageously comical to see Hannibal sitting on that rim in the ugly t-shirt that stretches over his chest because it's too tight and because he insists on retaining his perfect posture, and his face that says 'aristocrat' while his hair says 'Dad's Extreme Make Over' at 4/3 central on TLC. 

"Picture-perfect," Will says, smiling despite himself.

 

 

 

The thirty minutes it takes for the dye to sink into the hair, Hannibal uses for the explanations he still owes Will and Abigail. He doesn't bore them with details, or rather, keeps them only that informed that they are willing to follow, but not informed enough to give them a say. He doesn't relate to them what he spent the previous night doing, only that he has organized everything (money and more fake documents, Will assumes) and that they needn't worry. For now, their aim is to hide in a small cabin in Southern Germany at the center of the black forest until the waves have calmed. Hannibal has owned the house for several years under a pseudonym. With what Hannibal nonchalantly dubs "our car" they will make the drive east to Strasbourg to meet and old, gentlemanly but obviously also slightly shady couple, who Hannibal has been paying for the upkeep of his cabin and who are exclusively to be contacted by personal visit. After certain arrangements have been made, they'll immediately set forth for the cabin. It's only an hour and a half away from Strasbourg.

"We will be home by nightfall," Hannibal says in closing. Will keeps himself from thinking about his house in Wolf Trap and the dogs. Maybe staying in a cabin won't be that different after all.

Abigail's (brand new) phone buzzes. It's the timer. "Time to wash the color off," she says. "You'll be able to do that on your own, won't you?"

Hannibal smiles disdainfully. "I will. Please give me some privacy, then."

"Sure." With that, they're both out the door.

After last night, Will dreads talking to Abigail, he very much prefers watching her be: fumbling with the shower curtain, wrestling off the plastic gloves, flaring her nostrils in concentration—or breathing, generally. Now she faces him immediately after the door has closed and opens her mouth to speak, but then turns away from him to sit down on the only chair in the room. Will doesn't want to stand around awkwardly; still, sitting down on Hannibal's bed would feel like an offense. He settles on leaning against a wall, silently waiting for Hannibal's return to put him out of his misery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Unfortunately the semester starts next week, so I don't know how often I'll be able to update, but I'll try my best.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, it took me so long to update, but here's a (sort of) long chapter!

When Hannibal emerges from the bathroom, he looks like an upscale barber. Hair richly brown and the fringe blow-dried into a curve, he is younger, less aristocrat. His eyes narrow as Abigail and Will peer at him. 

"Don't laugh." 

"Heh," Abigail makes. "You actually look _good_. It's better than that washed-out gray. Why'd you never dye your hair before?"

Hannibal treats her remark as a rhetorical question, whose actual answer would probably be about the prestige of gray hair in intellectual circles. 

Allowing no further comments, he ushers them out of the room and tells them to pack—they should be gone in half an hour. Will does as he is told. There is really not much to pack for him—just the toothbrush and discarded shirt on the floor. He sets the timer on his phone to twenty minutes and stretches out on the bed. 

When it rings, he is still awake. Grabbing his suitcase, he puts on his unflattering brown hat, before locking the door behind him. Hannibal and Abigail are already waiting in the lobby. She is engrossed in a book (German Grammar II) while Hannibal has involved the receptionist in a polite conversation. After Will returns his room key, they leave through the heavy door. 

There is scarcely anyone on the street, but Will yields to an urge of averting his face. They all seem like walking cameras to him—black, lidless eyes on legs. 

"This way," Hannibal says, nodding. 

In a fast pace, they cut through the narrow Parisian streets to arrive in front of a mid-range, silver BMW with a black and white license plate—bought not rented. It beeps as Hannibal presses the remote key and the trunk pops open. Quickly, all three suitcases are stowed away. Book in hand, Abigail slips into the back of the car, while Hannibal and Will sit in the front. Like a family. 

Hannibal starts the ignition and reverses out of the parking spot. "Could you set up the GPS?" he asks Will. "The address is under favorites."

Will cycles through the menus and finds an address in Strasbourg.

"Please proceed to the highlighted route," the GPS blares. "Average time of journey: five hours and twelve minutes." Will frowns, glancing at Hannibal's tired eyes. "Isn't it better if I drive?" he asks.

"No need to worry."

"You didn't sleep all night."

Hannibal stares straight ahead, but a small strain appears on his temples. "I have gone longer periods without sleep. It isn't a problem."

Will sighs, trying to do so quietly. "Let's get some coffee on the way then, okay?"

"Alright."

 

 

After that, they remain silent. Hannibal drives confidently through the chaos of Paris' traffic, keeps an eye out for crossing pedestrians and floats with the current in the numerous rotaries. In the rearview-mirror, Will catches sight of Abigail with the book again open in her lap, skimming the pages with furrowed brows. As a kid, he used to be so jealous of all his friends who spent car journeys reading horror pulp; he would have gotten sick after just two pages. Now that he is used to driving himself he enjoys these exclusive moments of city life around him. Even as they leave Paris through the suburbs where streets become dirtier and houses higher, he is engrossed in observing.

When the urban space has completely faded, they shoot over an _autoroute,_ which is lined by fields and the occasional strip of fenced in forest. This is domesticated nature, groomed and functionalized, a lackluster imitation of how the black forest unfolds in Will's mind. Although he cannot recall ever having seen it, the two words combined create an impression in his mind that almost feels like a memory from long ago. He yearns for the dark green of a sky of leaves without gaps, the wet smell of earth squelching beneath his feet and a night that chars not only the sky but the air, too. 

There is some fumbling next to him. He turns his head. Hannibal has one hand on the radio. "Would you mind some music?" he asks. 

Before Will can say anything, Abigail has closed her book. "Not Bach. Please."

"It would have to be the classical music station. We'll have to bear with its program.

"Okay."

"Will?"

He shrugs; Hannibal probably needs the music to stay awake. "Sure," he says.

Hannibal presses a button and some pop song comes on. He quickly finds the classical station, which is in the middle of a piece only played by strings. Will does not know it, but it sounds nice, albeit pretty modern. 

Hannibal smiles and says to Abigail in the rearview-mirror, "Ravel. You should like it, I'm certain." Then he turns to Will. "Abigail recently discovered she likes French Impressionism."

Anger immediately shoots to the base of Will's neck. He sees Abigail, held hostage in a basement—being fed fine string music while a knife is cutting through her ear. Hannibal is working nimbly with the scalpel, head swaying to the music. Such a great way to confirm he hasn't damaged her inner ear! _What an extraordinary run on the cello, don't you think?_  

"That's… nice," Will says, smile a mere twitch.

As the pleasant music babbles on, Will again focuses on the landscape rushing by, this time, however, not out of interest but to keep his anger under control. He is far too inclined to buy into this façade of a family vacation, on the brink of forgetting that he is here under the pretense of having killed Freddy Lounds. No matter how at ease Abigail seems to him, there is a crater in her head and God-knows-what in her heart, and Will is not going to let her slip from him. 

He glances at his watch. It is a few minutes past eleven. Even if he does not doubt Hannibal's power to keep himself awake and at full capacity for inhuman amounts of time, the prospect of steering this car himself for distraction tempts him. He stays quiet for a few more minutes until he sees a sign with food and gas station symbols by the road.

"We could get coffee here," Will suggests, tapping against the glass. 

"I'm fine. We should not lose time for such a banality. Not to speak of the quality of the coffee in these kinds of establishments."

"I'm not asking for you, then. _I_ need a coffee, really do. You know I'm having trouble sleeping, and the journey is still going to be long."

Hannibal shoots him a glance with a small smile. "Of course. Forgive me."

He switches on the blinker and pulls over to the right lane. After a few twists in the road they arrive at an ugly Shell gas station next to a flat-roofed building on a concrete square. There are quite a few people around; the parking lot is almost full and four huge trucks are parked by its entrance. Hannibal finds an empty spot in the back next to a pink Smart. He stops the car.

"You will have to buy the coffee, I'm afraid," he says, turning around to Abigail. "We cannot risk being caught on the surveillance cameras."

Of course Abigail, officially dead, is their wild card. No one is looking for her, so it does not matter if the cameras catch her. Will looks at her and she seems content with her role.

"Sure." She smiles. "What d'you want me to get you?" 

"Just a coffee. A big one," Will says.

"Okay. You, Hannibal?"

His jaw works for a moment. "A… small, black coffee, please."

"Got it!" Abigail chimes, grabs her coat from the seat beside her and hops out of the car. 

Will watches her tiny figure hurry over the parking lot—head kept down under a furry hood (too warm for the weather,) hands jammed into the pockets. He wants to use the opportunity of being alone with Hannibal for asking him what he did to Abigail (and how he wants to use that knife he has found in the glove compartment), but he knows he would be rebuffed. It will have to wait. So instead, he suggests,

"The GPS says there are only two hours left. Switch with me."

"I never knew you were so keen on driving. Is that a result of your passion for boat motors?"

"It's a result of wanting to see you get some rest."

Hannibal scoffs elegantly. "Thank you."

Will nods, then points to the door. "So. Switch?"

Without another word, Hannibal opens his door and they circle around the car. Sitting down in the driver's seat, Will feels  better. He adjusts seat and mirror while Hannibal sits motionless beside him.

It takes a long while for Abigail to return—to the point at which Will starts worrying—but Hannibal fills the silence with pleasantries and details about the cabin. Finally, Abigail strides into view, carrying two coffees as well as a paper bag under her arm. 

"Those _people_ ," she moans, climbing into the car. "There were so many people inside and they were _all_ speaking french. And to me too! I mean, _I_ don't speak french, sorry. Ordering the coffee was okay, but the sandwiches—tsk! Oh yeah, I thought I'd get some because I was hungry. Here." She gives them each their coffee, then the bag. "That's why we've all got cheese— _'_ fromage' was the only thing I could think of. I hope that's fine."

"Sure," Will replies, amused. "Thanks."

Hannibal also thanks her before eying his coffee skeptically. Will has already gulped down a third of his—it is surprisingly okay. He puts it into the cup holder, starts the engine and opts for a U-turn. Behind him, Abigail murmurs something about starvation and starts chewing on her sandwich. Will does not feel hungry. Back on the winding road, then the freeway, he retrieves his coffee, though. While he has poured it down in a matter of minutes, Hannibal's cup rests untouched in its holder.

"Did you even _try_ it?" Will asks, raising an eyebrow but still focusing on the road (the traffic is heavy.)

"I am aware that the standard of my old life will not be sustainable in this one, but coffee is an exception in every matter for me. Drinking something _only_ to stay awake is intolerable."

"Why don't you just say that you don't like it?" Abigail complains.

Hannibal sighs quietly. "You're right: I _don't_ like it."

"I'll drink the rest then!"

"If you insist."

He gives her the cup and she tries the coffee. "Not that bad. You need to get used to this stuff, Hannibal. I don't think you'll be able to buy super high-end coffee down in a small village in Germany."

"We will be luckier than you think. Americans have an uncanny relationship with coffee—Europeans value their drinks much more highly."

She takes another sip. "If you say so. We'll be somewhere in a forest, though, right? I know the people who lived around us in Minnesota, _they_ didn't care about anything but hunting and carpeting and what happened behind their neighbor's curtains. No culinary heights there. Honestly, even my parents were that way."

"Your dad cared about much more than that, but I believe people like him will be rare around there."

"Hopefully," Abigail scoffs. 

Will can hear the genuine mirth in her voice. She sounds as if she has shed her trauma like old skin. Next to him, he can feel Hannibal assessing him—highly aware of the effect of their nonchalant conversation. Fortunately, the GPS shouts away any expectation Hannibal might have of his reaction. It tells them there is a traffic jam ahead.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I come throwing another chapter at you!

The traffic moves slowly, but at least they do not get stuck. Will hears Abigail slurp the coffee for a while before she returns to rustling the pages of her book. On the road, German number plates multiply and Strasbourg finally appears on the signs by the road. Driving has done for Will what he hoped it would—calmed him. With his hands on the wheel, the anxiety sizzles just quietly now and his previously pivoting brain has found the rhythms of the bumps in the tar. As he is slowly rolling along after the array of cars before him, he glimpses at Hannibal's sleeping form. Good that he didn't drink that coffee. With his head against the glass and his dark brown hair falling over his face, Will is reminded of the moment he found Hannibal holding Abigail's hand in the hospital room with that empty forsaken chair. Now, Hannibal's palms are turned up in his lap, as if waiting for God.  

Half an hour later, Will takes the exit leading to Strasbourg. Suddenly, Hannibal is awake again. 

"The house should be easy to find," he says. "The estimate of the GPS is probably correct;"—another thirty minutes—"it is at the other side of the city."

The GPS takes them around the edge of the city for a few miles before leading them through streets with tram tracks and medieval architecture. "This looks so European," Abigail comments. It is beautiful but all of its little houses and Hannibal's stories of its history cannot steer Will's thoughts from the prospect of a cabin in the woods. He hopes he will not have to talk to their tenders (he is paranoid and exhausted), but that he will be allowed to remain inside the car until they stop again at their new haven. When the GPS estimates only a few more minutes, Hannibal explains to him,

"The couple looking after the cabin have never met me, for security reasons, and I intend for it to remain so. I have told Abigail all about the arrangement I have with them. She has even spoken to them on the phone before—the husband is an old scotsman who hasn't forgotten his english. The both of us"—he nods at Will—" will not show our faces to them. We remain under the guise of Alexander Young and Thomas Miller."

Will nods. He has understood this new dynamic and Abigail's value not only as a member of their family but also as a pawn in their escape. Will takes a few more turns until he arrives in a lane with rows of identical houses—not the richest part of town. The GPS announces that they have arrived at their destination and Hannibal guides Will to a driveway between two buildings. 

After some instructions—extreme politeness, please; don't forget to have them give you the papers—Abigail rings the doorbell and is led inside by a tiny woman. Will worries for a moment about foisting off such an important task on Abigail, but he knows she is adult enough to do this. With a folder in hand and a set of keys slung over her pinky, she leaves the house and slips back into the car. "Here," she says, handing everything to Hannibal.

"Thank you." He starts flipping through the documents. "How did it go?"

"Oh, they were so nice. The madam wanted me to stay for tea and I had to decline about five times. Do you have everything?"

Hannibal nods slowly as he checks dates and signatures. He glances at his watch, then smiles. "We have one and a half hours left to drive. If we leave now, we'll be home in time for dinner."

Despite himself, Will feels his stomach rumble the moment they are back on the road. The mixture of cheap coffee and little food has left him on the brink of nausea (which he is prone to, anyway). But when they are about to cross the German border is stomach lurches with baseless fear—how big are the chances they will be subjected to a search? Close to none, but anything other than zero is a trigger of fear for Will. A few minutes later, they rush across the border easily, as if they were a searching finger passing the red line between countries on a map. Will calms down instantaneously. 

A few miles later, Hannibal makes him stop by the side of the road. "The rest of the way is quite complicated. It's better if I drive," he says. Hannibal shuts down the GPS and takes turn after turn on roads that become smaller with every junction and rise and fall and slope over hills. The forest is spreading like a green fog; the trees close in on them, creep up until their branches touch high over the dotted line and the sinking sun is cut to pieces by their trunks. They climb over several hills and roll through flat valleys without passing any clusters of houses. Only in the distance the whimsical shapes of rural German towns peak through the trees. 

"Are you hungry?" Hannibal asks. 

Will nods without thinking.

"Good. We're almost there."

The tar of the road has long since given way for bumpy dirt. It scrunches beneath the car's tires as they take a sharp turn into an even smaller lane. It has become so dark that the trees are only a black paper cut against the sky. 

The ground rises for a few meters before falling again and now Will perks up from his slump because he thinks he sees the triangle of a roof between the trees. A moment passes, then they find their way into a small clearing. In its midst Will discovers their cabin. There are no details in the dusk, but its silhouette looks modern, spacious.  

Will is elated. In no time they halt and unpack and Will and Abigail are sent inside while Hannibal stays a moment longer at the car.

Inside the house, before Will finds the light switch, he smells the wood like bark still warm from the last sunshine, rough and slightly musky. Then he flips on the lights.

He is standing in a narrow corridor of cool brown all around with doors led into both walls, which open up into a spacious room at the hallway's end. The ceiling hangs low and is made of the same dark wood as walls and floor, but not of visible beams; instead there are neatly dressed panels. With Abigail tagging along, he crosses the corridor to the living room at its end. The first thing Will notices is a fireplace of gray stones with a small bust on top. Facing it, a sofa and armchair sit on top of a black and white rug (the theme of the whole room, it seems) and in the corner, two bookcases proudly carry the weight of countless books. The furniture is elegant and modern in the hazel, rustic husk of the room, which does not feel crammed despite being small because the ceiling in this part the cabin is the underside of the roof and the back wall consists almost entirely of plane of windows. Dark shadows hover beneath their reflections in the glass. 

Will turns to set his bag down on the white dining table beside him. "It's nice, isn't it?" he says to Abigail. 

"Oh yeah." She nods. "Look at all those books! Do you think Hannibal has them all twice—here and in Baltimore?"

Will makes a noncommittal expression. "You'll have more than enough time to find that out."

Without another word, she turns around and peaks her head into the adjacent kitchen, which has a simple open frame led into its wall. "Kind of narrow here," she says. "I wonder where he's going to put all of the food—the fridge his half the size of his old one." She then heads back down the corridor and opens the door on the left. "Bathroom!" Then the door on the right. "Oh, I think this might be my room. Don't you want to come look, Will?" 

He feels slightly dizzy—he should've eaten that sandwich. "I'll stay here for a bit," he calls to her.

"Alright!" She reemerges from the room and heads for the staircase lining the wall next to the fireplace. Will can see from where he is leaning on the table that on top of it there is no additional wall, just a banister fencing off the space beneath the roof's triangle. "Bedroom!" Abigail declares, at the top of the staircase. "What a nice bed—I'm slightly jealous that _you_ get to sleep here and I don't. Looking down is pretty cool."

There is knocking against the door. Will gets up and trudges down the hallway to open for Hannibal. Suitcase and linen bag in hand, he smiles when he enters, wind-swept hair in his face. 

"I think this should be all from the car," he says, handing the bag to Will. "Could you take those into the kitchen? It's the ingredients for dinner. And check the refrigerator, please."

"Sure."

Will puts the bag onto the kitchen counter. Inside the fridge, there are a few bottles of juice, some canned goods, milk, and cheese. The tenders must have driven up here to stock up the cabin. "Fridge's full!" he calls. 

He hears some faint rustling and footsteps, then Hannibal appears in the kitchen. "Shall we cook then?" he asks. Will nods. He needs food. They call for Abigail and she scuttles down the stairs and leans through the frame. "Are we making dinner?"

"Yes," Hannibal says. "And I need you to cut the potatoes."

With the three of them, it is stuffy inside the kitchen. Abigail diligently cuts up the vegetables while Hannibal starts mixing the broth and Will is left to washing mushrooms (although he has not liked those very much ever since he saw them grow out of people.) It is supposed to be German stew. According to Hannibal, their first meal together should be something simple and local. 

After everything has been cut, the vegetables are dumped into the broth to boil for a few minutes. Will watches Hannibal carefully measure red wine with a table spoon to refine the soup. With it is almost ready, Will takes it upon himself to set the table. Everything is alien in this kitchen—he realizes now how well he knows the one in Hannibal's Baltimore home in comparison. He keeps being lectured on where to look for what. 

Because he knows that there is wine he starts searching for the appropriate glasses and when he finds them, he pulls out two and a water glass. As he brushes past Abigail on his way to the table, she complains,

"Hey, what's that supposed to be? We're three people."

"You're nineteen," he replies, putting the glasses down beside the bowls. 

Immediately, Hannibal is next to him. He is holding another wine glass and exchanges it with the standard one.  "Europeans understand that one shouldn't wait too long to engage with luxuries like wine. It would be a pity to only start at twenty-one."

"I know the legal drinking age is eighteen here," Will scoffs. "Do you even _like_ wine, Abigail?"

"Sure do. Only the sweeter ones, though."

"That's why I brought a _Beaujolais_ ," Hannibal says. Water glass in hand, he retreats to the kitchen, where he stirs the soup after smelling it. "It's done. Have a seat."

At the table, Will feels habit mollify him. This—the three of them, noses smelling the food, shadows long but soft on their faces—this is a remnant of a time when he believed that Hannibal was his friend and that he was good for himself and Abigail both. 

Hannibal lifts his glass. "To this life," he says, looking at the two of them intently for a second—Will can feel his gaze like a plaster on his eyeballs; he blinks—before tilting his glass to clink them. Abigail beams back at him. 

" _Guten Appetit_ ," she says and adds, "It means 'enjoy your meal'," as explanation for Will.

Then they start eating. The food is saltier than Will is used to from Hannibal—maybe that's a German thing. The broth is strong, the vegetables chewy, but something is missing in the overall taste and it does not take long to pinpoint what it is: the meat. Without human flesh available, Hannibal did not concede defeat to the animal cuts of a butcher's shop. 

During the course of the meal, they speak about the cabin and its surrounding area, the forest and its hills. Hannibal is visibly pleased as both Abigail and Will tell him how much they like it, and after only a few minutes, Abigail has involved Hannibal in a conversation about his books. He says that he has made a special selection tailored to this reclusive lifestyle. He recommends her Thoreau's _Walden_ , but she just raises a sceptic brow. 

When they have all finished, it is half past eight. Will can feel the jet lag tugging at his bones. Yawning quietly across from him, Abigail seems just as tired. The hand genteelly covering her mouth drops to her lap and she asks,

"Is it okay if I go to bed soon? I'll help with the dishes of course."

"Not a problem," Hannibal says. "I don't think I will hold out much longer, either."

They all get up and clear the table. In the kitchen, they wash the dishes in silence. The repetitive circles Will makes with the dishtowel lull his brain to a stupor. After a while, he only feels the strain in his neck and the rough texture of the cloth. 

It does not take them long to finish. Abigail yawns again, loudly this time as proof of her exhaustion, and swipes a hand through her hair. 

"I'll be going then. Good night, see you tomorrow."

"Good night, Abigail." Hannibal looks at her kindly. "You should have everything you need; if not, we'll be here."

He gently squeezes her arm and she smiles, turns and slips out of the kitchen. Her steps plod through the hallway, then her door shuts. Now the sound of soft wind skims the window panes. Trees rustle beneath the quiet crooning of an owl.

Hannibal fixes his eyes on Will; in the dim light they seem to be tadpoles. "You were right when you told me to drink that coffee today—I should have listened to you." Hannibal cocks his head. "I can't remember the last time I felt this tired. We should go to bed, too. I will have to find a second duvet in the storeroom for you. Shall we?"

Clearly, Hannibal does not expect a reply and makes to leave through the arch, but Will stays rooted in place—this is his opportunity and he will not let Hannibal brush him off again.

"Do you really think you'll just get away with this?" he sneers at Hannibal's back. "Without any explanation, any apology?"

Turing back around, Hannibal's face is devoid of expression. "A gift needs an apology?"

"A lie does."

"I never lied to you. You were FBI"—the past tense stings more than it should—"you know exactly what lies are. I was illusive with my wording, that is all."

"Having me procure her ear was a token of the truth, then."

"I withheld information, yes, but what I did not tell you was for your and Abigail's good. We were involved in a dangerous entanglement of people who were pursuing different justices, then—I couldn't let Abigail become another thread in that knot."

"No, but you could've told me about it. You could've let me see more than just _part_ of her."

Hannibal's fingers play with the corner of a towel on the counter. "You told me you saw her in your dreams and I anticipated the fact. Withholding her from you was a necessary measure—I hoped your dreams would soothe your wound for as long as I had to keep it open. What did you dream of last night, Will?"

"Craters," he snaps. "Tunnels and corridors. Holes, in general. I'd prefer if you kept your outdated psycho-analytical techniques on their shelves, Doctor Lecter… My dreams have always had the tendency to be nightmares. Nightmares don't close wounds."

Hannibal looks contrite, his eyes skimming the patterns of the tiles. "This is a new life—this life brings new dreams."

"Oh, I am _very_ sure that my brain will rehash every gruesome image it has processed—it doesn't need new ones for that." Will exhales. "But this is not about me. I'm more concerned with Abigail's nightmares."

"I treated her over the last year. She will be nightmare-free, problem-free."

"What did you treat her with?"

"Some of the same techniques I used on you. Light therapy, simple narcotic and hallucinatory drugs. I treated her as I would treat any trauma patient. I didn't eradicate old memories, I gave her the strength to transform them."

Will nods. "Did you keep her in your basement for her therapy?"

"She often stayed with me in my house; ate with me, lived with me. I taught her how to cook a few of my favorite recipes that I learned during my travels when I was young. I thought she would retain their spirit, and she did. My library was always open to her when we were alone, and when we had visitors she took the books she had so carefully spent hours choosing away with her. She had no desire to leave."

"And then you weaponized her by having her push Alana through a window."

"No." Hannibal looks straight at Will. Anger still under his lids, Will looks back. "This is Darwinism, Will. The world doesn't adjust to us, we have to adjust to it. In that moment, through Alana's intervention, the world differed from our expectations, but we acted accordingly. Abigail was able to adapt and so she survived."

Will lowers his head, squeezing his eyes shut. When he remains silent, Hannibal says his name again, more quietly. Will looks up. 

"I am sorry about Alana." Hannibal's eyes wetly reflect the dim lights. "I had hoped for a better fate for her. Still, would you rather see a version of events in which I must apologize for not being able to bring the three of us together?"

Will faintly shakes his head. "No." He thinks about Alana shivering in the rain—lips blue, splinters in her back and so cold she struggles to keep conscious—a worse image than the prospect of her death.

"We all place our own happiness higher than that of others. It's our gate to survival, don't be ashamed of it."

"Abigail's happiness ranks pretty high for me."

"For me, too. Do you believe she will be happy here?"

"I hope so." It's the only statement he can make without betraying himself or the truth.

They both fall silent. Will's brain is hammering inside his head but his heart is beating slowly and evenly. All the accusations that still linger on his tongue feel unfair when he thinks of his own treachery. Hannibal has killed and hurt, but he has never disguised his core the way Will himself has. 

Hannibal takes a step into the room. "It's late," he says.

"I know. We should go to bed."

They hesitate for a moment. Will's hand twitches, as if he is about to say something, but he does not. He knocks shoulders with Hannibal on his way to the living-room. "I'll take the sofa then," he says. 

"I shouldn't let you sle—"

"Oh, _come_ on." Will's voice is groggy. "Just tell me where the bedding is."

Hannibal is visibly uncomfortable and diligently helps Will prepare the couch. After they are done, he apologizes for inconveniencing Will and tells him that they can switch anytime—to no avail—then they retreat to their respective beds. In the dark, Will stares at the high windows for a long time, even though he cannot see what lies behind them. Almost blind, he listens for Hannibal's quiet breathing from above.


	7. Chapter 7

The next morning, Will wakes to the scent of warm bread. Light falls onto his face, so he scrunches his eyes and rubs a hand over them. Something pops—sounds like a toaster. Will stretches languidly, lifting his legs over the armrest of the sofa; he slept with them curled all night and now they hurt. 

"Hannibal?" he asks, eyes still in slits. 

"Good morning! I'm making breakfast," comes the reply from the kitchen.

Will grunts and grabs his watch, which he discarded on the coffee table yesterday night. It is  a few minutes before seven. With another grunt, he forces himself to get up. He cannot be bothered to get dressed so he scuffles into the kitchen in his boxers and shirt; no sleep walking episode has ever managed to teach him how to dress appropriately for the weather. 

"Did you sleep well?" Hannibal asks, back turned to him. He is wearing a gray dress shirt, which is tugged into a pair of slim fitting jeans—it is a very casual look for him. With three plates in front of him, he cuts a block of cheese into slices and drapes them in a fan-formation on thick slices of bread.

Will rubs his neck. "Yeah, the couch is a little short. But—" he adds because Hannibal turns his appalled face to him, "it will do. No problem. Is Abigail still asleep? The food smells great, by the way."

Hannibal acknowledges the compliment with a nod. "She's in her room."

"I'll go get her."

Will decides that at this point, his level of undress is getting ridiculous, so he grabs a flannel and a pair of trousers from his suitcase. Looking acceptable again, he knocks on Abigail's door and she answers him. He opens the door and says,

"Breakfast is almost done." 

She is lying in bed, book held open at arm's length.

"You up long?" Will asks.

"Half an hour. I just didn't want to get up and help with breakfast." She grins and closes her book loudly. It is _The_ _Greatest Adventures of Sherlock Holmes._ "I'll get up now, though. I'll be ready in ten!"

Will leaves and tries to make himself useful in the kitchen. As he is pouring orange juice into three big glasses, he realizes he has not even showered yet. He feels like a bum. 

Ten minutes later, just like she promised, Abigail appears, wearing her hair in a side-braid and carrying the Sherlock Holmes. She pushes it back into the small gap between two other books on one of the bookshelves before sitting down at the table. They eat breakfast quickly compared to Hannibal's standards, but Will enjoys every moment of it. He never thought bread to be a delicacy, but now that he has eaten _this_ , he might need to reconsider. Another German thing, perhaps. Hannibal announces that they will have to make a trip into the nearest town, which is about five kilometers away from their cabin—very backwater but quite pretty, as he says. It is saturday so there is a market on and they need fresh foods urgently. 

Will quickly excuses himself to take a shower before they leave. Afterwards he shaves, restoring the youth of his face, and puts on a better shirt. 

As they get into the car, he tries not to let anxiety take the better of him again (it has just been three days, this is a middle-of-nowhere town in Germany, they look different) and to enjoy the idyll of the countryside. The drive is short, over windy dirt roads, then small tarred streets between the oppressive proximity of huddling trees.

The town lies in a valley. During their approach, Will can see the brown gables on white houses that stick out between the hills and as they roll along the only major road, he marvels at the balconies that are overladen with flowers and whimsy cafés on the sidewalks. They stop on a group of parking spots by the road at the center of the town. When Will gets out of the car, he shivers. The sky is overcast and it is still chilly, so he zips his coat all the way up. Before them is a church with two steeples, which serves as one side of a square, in its middle a green space with a few trees and the stalls of a market.

As they walk toward it, looking at the idyll of people bustling about, chatting with vendors or each other in front of the historical backdrop, and Hannibal recites their shopping list, embarrassment creeps upon Will. He is useless. How is he going to be part of this endeavor without any knowledge of the German language? In the car, he asked Hannibal for the name of the town. "Freudenstadt," he said. "This is going to be your first German word, Will. It means 'city of happiness'." Will appreciates the sentiment, but he is not going to get far with that.

Drawing closer, the smell of fresh vegetables and fruit fills Will's nose. Food makes up most of the market, but the vendors on the outer lane also sell jewelry and various trinkets. 

"I will buy all that we necessarily need," Hannibal suggests. "Why don't you two look around for anything else you might like? We could use a variety of fruits."

Usually, Will abhors Hannibal's seemingly courteous patterns that he uses to cement his dominance, but today, he is glad for some leisure. 

Walking along a row of stalls with apples and citrus fruits, whose smell makes Will's tongue tingle, Abigail says to him,

"Germans aren't that bad with English, you know. It doesn't matter that you don't know any German."

Will knows that, but he despises being the American foreigner who relies solely on the fact that English is the global language. "You can help me, though, right? For how long have you been learning?" he asks.

She hums in consideration, picking up an orange and squeezing its skin. "Almost a year? Hannibal was my teacher, but he didn't have that much time, so… I think I could be better. But I'm sure you'll learn quickly! Once you start talking to the people here, it'll get easier." She puts the fruit down and gravitates toward a heap of pears. 

"I don't think we should start talking to the people too much, Abigail," he mutters.

"Well, if you're so paranoid, maybe you should start calling me by my other name."

 _Eve_. No. "Maybe I should. Hey, do you think we should get some of these pears?"

"Yeah, they look good. Three? Wait, I'll ask, let me think."

She stares off into space for a moment, then addresses the saleswoman in German, holding up three fingers. The woman nods, takes three of the pears and bags them. Abigail pays and lifts her hand in goodbye. Will just smiles, staring at the pears. He tries to turn his face away from people so they will not look too closely. 

"Well, that didn't go too bad," she beams once they have started walking again. Will feels something akin to pride.

They browse a few more stalls after that and buy some green apples and a box of raspberries. Between the people, Will catches glimpses of Hannibal from time to time, holding up vegetables for inspection or talking eagerly with vendors. Having made their way through the food section, they turn into the aisle offering other objects. Most of it is boring or trash—ancient video games, a collection of spoons, small toolsets. At the back of the alley, though, Abigail spots a stall selling jewelry. 

"I'll have a look at it, okay? Meanwhile you can look at the, uh—"

"I like jewelry," Will says. He is good at choosing it, too. 

As they approach, the salesman, a young man with an undercut and a tunnel in his ear, greets them in German. On a blue suede blanket are all different types of jewelry laid out: bracelets on the right, rings and earrings in the middle inside of small boxes, and necklaces on the left, hung up on racks. Most of it is silver and a considerable amount looks punk—far less traditional than Will would have expected from a rural German town. Abigail's fingers trace the shape of several bracelets and test the width of the smaller-looking rings before the vendor asks her something. Her head snaps up, but she just makes a prolonged _uhm_. He waits for a moment, then grins and says in accented English,

"Do you look for something specific?"

"No, I was just… I liked the bracelets."

His grin widens, showing crooked teeth. "My mom makes them. Which do you like?"

She points at a dainty one with a red stone on a narrow plate. Will likes it too, thinks it would suit her small wrists well. 

"Good choice," the vendor says. "Do you want me to put it on you to try?"

"Sure." 

She extends her wrist and he takes the bracelet around it. While fumbling with the clasp, he asks,

"Where are you from? You and your…" His eyes flit up at Will.

"My… dad. We're from America, but we just moved here."

He has fastened the bracelet and she turns her wrist a few times. It is a little loose, but falls nicely on top of her hand. 

"What do you think?" he asks.

She smiles, eyes shining. "I like it a lot. How much is it?"

"Twenty Euro."

She seems to be deliberating, so Will cuts in,

"I could get it for you. As a house warming present so to speak."

She gives a short sigh, glancing at him. "Oh, you know… It's all Hannibal's money anyway, right? It doesn't really matter who pays. I'll just get it for myself."

Will cannot help but make a quiet noise, the hand that was already on his back pocket now falling to hang by his side. 

"So you take it?" the vendor asks.

Abigail nods. 

"That's twenty then."

She flips open the lid of her leather bag and pulls out her wallet, from which she takes two ten euro notes. 

"Thanks." He seems to think for a moment. "If you come back you can get a uh… discount. Yeah?"

"Yeah, sure." She grins and looks at her bracelet. "See you then!"

"See you!" And to Will, "Goodbye."

Once they are out of hearing range, Will says,

"Looks good on you."

"Yeah, I know." She grins. 

They walk another round over the market until they find Hannibal, who has got three big linen bags over his arm. Will cannot pinpoint what it is about him—the clothes, the deliberate walk, the unusual face—that makes him blend in so seamlessly in this new environment. Will envies it. 

They return to their car shortly after—enough exposure for a day and besides, it is noon and they are all hungry. Will wonders what Hannibal will conjure this time—no meat yet.

On the way back, Hannibal drives swiftly; he says he has some perishables in the trunk that need to be kept cool. Will has his head leaned against the window, watching trees streak by.  Only after a few minutes—too early to be back home—he feels the car slow down. Lifting his head, he fails to see anything unusual. Then he hears a quiet but forceful _Oh no_ from Abigail. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Hannibal is on next week! I'm super excited and I'm sure you are, too. I really hope, though, that you'll continue reading this fic despite there then being a canon version of Hannibal's escape. :) See you soon!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, it's close to a miracle that I'm updating. But here goes!

 

In front of them, on the strip of dirt beside the road, stands an inconspicuous black BMW. Next to it, a man in a dark blue police uniform looks sternly at them and points a signaling disc across the road. Will stops breathing. 

"It's alright," Hannibal mutters, slowing the car to a halt. The officer approaches the driver's window. Will flattens himself against his seat. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he sees Abigail's hands clamp around the hat in her lap.

Hannibal has let down his window and the officer stoops in front of it. They greet each other in German. The man sounds rough with his gray pipe cleaner brows knitted tight and Hannibal speaks with professional evenness. 

"Ah," the officer now makes, "You are not from here." His accent is so strong Will has problems understanding him at all. 

Hannibal replies in German, but is cut off. 

"Even foreigners have to, how is it called…  follow ze rules, mister."

"There's no need to speak English with me. German is perfectly fine."

"Now, I must tell you zat we made a speeding test on zis street."

Will swallows. The policeman seems oblivious to their identities; probably never checked the most wanted lists, thinks of his wife's bosom instead of listening to his superiors' briefings and when the news are on during dinner he is busy gorging himself on potato salad. But that is a deduction based on cliches, Will knows. So he prepares for different scenarios. An escape would be difficult, a car chase along the narrow, winding _Landstraßen_ dangerous, even with Hannibal's driving skills. But then…

"People sink zey can just drive fast, fast, fast here, but it's not allowed," the policeman continues. "Did you see zat?" He points at the traffic sign with a big 60 on it.

"Yes, I did."

"Don't you care about traffic rules where you're from? It's terrible in ozer parts of ze world."

Hannibal cocks his head and the officer shrugs. "I need your papers and your driver's license," he says.

Hannibal nods diligently and leans over to the glove compartment. Before he has yanked it open, his hand briefly squeezes Will's knee. Inside, beneath the papers, Will catches a glimpse of a gun. A relief: this will be the accessory for his preferred mode of escape.  

Having pulled his driver's license out of his wallet, Hannibal hands it through the window together with the registration papers. The police officer furrows his brows in scrutiny, tongue toying with his thin lips. Will inspects his faces for the slightest hint of suspicion. 

"You need to come out of ze car, mister," he commands.

A vein is starting to protrude on Hannibal's forehead. "If I've understood you correctly, we are talking about a minor speeding offense. In that case, a fine of about twenty euro is usually imposed. If at all possible, I would like to pay the fine and move on quickly. We are in a rush."

"It's my job to tell you what ze rules are, okay? Before you can pay anysing, you have to go to my colleague—" he points his thumb at the BMW— "and look at ze recordings which we have made of ze offense."

A second one, maybe less moron more on track with the news. The shape of the pistol has penetrated Will's brain and it stays there like the pit in a peach. 

With forced curtesy, Hannibal says, "I am acknowledging the speeding offense; there is no need to review the recording. I would be very grateful if you could take down my personal information so we can be on our way."

The man guffaws. "If you sink I am wasting your time… you are wasting ours, too. Police is a busy work!"

"I would prefer not to waste anyone's time, then."

The policeman's face scrunches again into a frown. "You have to get out of ze car now," he barks. 

Hannibal shoots a glance at Abigail in the rearview mirror. She is listening attentively. "Alright," he says, hand on the door handle, "but I would like my daughter to take a look at the data, as well. She has better eyes than me."

"If she _has_ to…"

Abigail and Hannibal both get out of the car. Her red beanie lies discarded on the backseat. Heartbeat in his ears, Will watches them walk over to the BMW. Once they stand in front of it, the other policeman opens its door to get out, nodding sternly in greeting.  

"I apologize for being in such a hurry," Hannibal says with mischief on his face, "We're a busy family. I tend to bite off more than I can chew." 

Immediately, Will knows. 

Everything that happens he sees as one of his reconstructions, only now a half second in advance. The policemen turn toward the car, their backs to Hannibal. His hand flits to Abigail's elbow. Then, in a flash, she reaches for one of their pistols. At the same moment, Hannibal has got the other's arm twisted behind his back, his front slammed against the car window. Abigail snatches the other pistol too and aims it at the men. When the unrestrained one spins around and shouts, Hannibal has already broken the other's neck. Hannibal takes his arm; it crunches loudly as it's smashed in the car door. Then he grabs his crumpled face to snap his neck, too. The corpse falls to the floor.

Everything's still. For a moment, Will hears Abigail's and Hannibal's breathing just as loudly as his own, a rush of white noise. He has only now remembered the pistol. Then he's out of the car. 

He hurries over to the others, eyes fixed on the corpses' gaping mouthes. Their shock seems undeserved, unreal. 

"Will!" Abigail's eyes blaze at him. "Don't just stand around!"

She's up close to him and he blinks and now she is holding one of the men by the armpits. She's bending under his weight, so Will quickly takes him from her. She shoves both pistols into his belt. For a second, her gaze locks with Hannibal's and then she's running down the curve in the road, where she positions herself. She looks around and points her thumbs up. 

"Come," Hannibal whispers sharply. 

Together, they drag the bodies to their car. Will strains beneath the weight of the officer—he's larger than he thought and has quite a bit of belly fat. Hannibal will cut that off later. Might cook it up. For the flavor. Will swallows and pulls harder. 

"Trunk?" he huffs.

Hannibal nods, drops the body and opens the trunk. The food they just bought is sitting inside—neat in its bags—and Hannibal gathers them quickly but gently in his arms to place them onto the backseat. There he arranges them so they won't fall during the drive before grabbing the back of the corpse's uniform and hoisting him up. Will grabs the legs and they lay him into the trunk, then seize the other one to do the same. They slam the lid shut. 

Abigail jogs back up to them, out of breath as she arrives. "No cars," she says. 

"Good. Abigail." Hannibal's eyes zoom in on her. "I need you to take the police car. Drive it off into the woods where it's hidden from immediate view—at least ten kilometers from here. I will take Will and the bodies home and then get you from where you are. Understood?"

She nods emphatically, turns on the spot and slips into the car. She fumbles for a moment (probably unhooking the radio device), starts the engine and drives off. Now the scene looks undisturbed—no blood in the dirt, no signs of struggle, as if Will had rewinded it to the beginning. For a moment he's afraid he has and that it will all just start again. 

"We should go," he quickly says to Hannibal.

They return to the car, climb in. The moment he's sat down he pulls the pistols from his waistband and throws them into glove compartment. Now they have one for each of them. They depart quickly, go in the other direction as Abigail. Will leans back against his seat and hears Hannibal take a long breath through his nose.

"Can you smell it on us?" Hannibal asks.

"Smell what?"

"The murder."

Will's eyebrow twitches; he lifts his hands to his face and breathes in. "I smell like sweat."

Hannibal looks over and smiles at him. "One component of the smell of violence, certainly. But," he looks back on the road, "you were of course not fully involved."

His intonation is so cautious, Will cannot tell if it is reproach or anticipation. He does not comment on it; instead he says, "You and Abigail make a good team."

"That we do. We've had lots of time to practice." 

As they round another bend, the shape of the trees and forking paths start to become familiar and Will realizes how dangerously close to home they have killed. Then, only two minutes later, between two oaks they take the turn and roll down toward their cabin in the valley. Hannibal makes a U-turn on their lot to reverse onto the gravel next to their house.

Hidden from the view of potential onlookers, they lift the two bodies, one at a time, from the trunk. 

"Into the shed," Hannibal orders. 

In the dusk last night, Will did not notice there being anything behind the cabin, but, now shuffling backwards over the grass with the corpse's legs in a secure grip, he discovers a small, rundown hut. From what Will can see over his shoulder, there is a freezer inside spanning almost from wall to wall, and a few appliances on a shelf in the back. They put the corpse down on top of the freezer's closed lid for now (he is too big to fit in whole) and get the other body. This one is harder to carry because he is fatter. Will takes the torso this time, smells cigarettes on him while he pulls him up to readjust his grip. Once he is dumped onto the other one, Will quickly turns into the shadows of the shed, hiding his spasming hands and clenched lips from Hannibal's view. Suddenly a cell jingles. A moment of rustling, then Hannibal says,

"It's Abigail. She has found a good spot. I'll fetch her now."

Will turns around. "Sure. I'll prepare the bodies, then. Any specific… cuts you need me to make?"

They exchange a smile and Hannibal replies, "I'll do the detail work. You will simply have to make them conservable. The tools are on the shelves behind you."

"Alright."

They nod at each other and Hannibal leaves. With his eyes closed, Will waits in the shed until he hears the rumbling of the car fade and disappear. With only the chirping of birds and the faint clatter of distant train tracks in the air, he gets to work. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't have a driver's license...


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, guys, this is an incredibly short chapter and I can't seem to get on with the story. I'm a lazy bitch. Only that I'm really not because I'm writing two papers for uni atm... Yeah, you don't care about that, so on with it.

First, he searches the shelved for usable tools. There is a medium sized hand saw, which is in surprisingly good condition, and a hatchet on the shelf below. In a box, Will finds some sisal string, then grabs a plastic sheet from a pile in a corner. He realizes now that it was imprudent to place the corpses down onto the freezer without any protection, considering it is the only work top he can use. He will try to prevent blood spillage as well as possible, but there will be some anyway and he does not want to risk staining. With his teeth clenched, he grabs the armpits of the upper corpse and pulls to have it slide to the ground. While doing that, he stares at the ceiling, the flecks of dirt, the grain, because when he looks too closely at death, his brain rewinds, making wounds close and heads raise, the white flesh recolored—

Now he's looking. Eyes like fog ponder him until they clear and blink. Blink, blink. The head lolls forward, scrunches, crunches as the vertebrae realign. The scrape on the cheek closes. He opens his mouth. Will huffs, trembles, the man turns his head, frowns to speak—with a crash, the corpse falls. It lands on the floor amidst buckets and tools.

Will's hands are in the air and he leans against the wall, panting, the stench of disinfectant and dirt biting into his nose and the wooden beams turning like windmills before his eyes. He coughs, squeezes his eyes shut. This has to stop. He is better than this. 

It takes him a moment to regulate his breathing and clear the nausea away, but he knows this, he is used to doing it. If he wants to survive in this arrangement with Hannibal, he has to pull himself together.

Still shaking slightly, he stands up straight and inspects the corpse on the ground. The fall did not do too much damage, only another minor scrape at the forehead. He leaves it lying there for a moment to grab the other one. This time, he prepares himself for a second, then looks straight at its face. He can cope. Slowly, he slides it down from the freezer and onto the other one, so he can spread the sheet on its white top. Once he has heaved one of them back up, he starts undressing it, glad that the rigor mortis has not yet set in. For now, he discards the clothes in a corner and then readies his instruments. 

There will be as few cuts as possible to not separate parts that Hannibal might want to cook as one later on. Since the freezer is large, the whole torsos will fit. Will takes the string and ties it around the beginning of one of the thighs, pulling the sling close. Saw gripped tight, he makes the first tentative cut, marking where the incision will run. It is difficult at first because of the soft fat that moves with every jerk, but he gets the hang of guiding the saw evenly after a few attempts. That way, he cuts off both legs without spilling too much blood (the string keeps the vessels tight and contained) and proceeds with the arms. He places the extremities in a pile onto a sheet on the ground. The head and torso that now lie in front of him look like the body of an insect—a wasp without wings, mutated into a human face. He could set mirrors into its eyes to turn it into a fly, a dirty and overtly tenacious thing, disturbing you recurrently in moments you can stand it the least. 

Next, the head needs to go. He tourniquets it carefully, then chops it off with a blow of the hatchet. This is how he did it with Tier, too, only it was easier then, because it was FBI work. Because it was an expression of his hate for Hannibal. Then, the images flickered between Tier and him. Will not only made Tier into the monster he wanted to be, but also Hannibal into the one he was. His metaphors were is protection. Now he has a cut off head between his hands—it does not tell him its intended meaning. He opens the freezer and dumps body part after body part inside. It is time for the second surgery. 

 

 

 

When he is done, he is not bloody, but he feels bloody. There are a few drops on the plastic sheet but otherwise, everything has stayed clean. He makes himself breathe a few times, then takes the sheet outside to hose it down next to the shed. There he leaves it to dry, locks the door and heads inside. His clothes smell of sweat and dirt and stick to him; his hands are sore from gripping the saw so tightly that long. 

He winds himself out of his clothes and steps into the shower, where he lets the water run ice cold, then steaming hot. The steep rise of temperature makes him dizzy. After a few minutes under running water, he hears through the open window the sound of the car rolling over gravel. He quickly turns off the water, steps out and towels himself dry. There is a bathrobe draped over the radiator which he pulls on. Then he opens the door.

Abigail and Hannibal enter the hallway just as he steps out. She jumps, then smiles at him. Pulling the robe tighter around himself—it is much colder outside of the bath—Will asks,

"Did everything go alright?"

"Yep," she says. "I found a spot with a few big branches on the ground—they'd come down from a storm I s'pose. I parked the car behind them. Should be a good spot."

Will nods. 

Her eyes glint at his bathrobe. "And you took some time off for yourself?"

"I was just sweaty. Everything's prepared."

"Good," Hannibal says with a feral smile. "We shall have a small lunch, then, to keep some space in our bellies. Dinner will be a feast."

They disperse in different directions. Hannibal disappears inside the shed and Will makes for his suitcase, which he still has not unpacked, to get dressed in his usual look of jeans and flannel. Just as he has fastened all buttons, a hand touches his shoulder. He flinches and turns around. 

"Sorry," Abigail says. "I didn't mean to startle you."

He coughs a laugh. "Jumpiness has sort of become my thing."

She smiles, her light eyes flitting between his. She is up close to him, nearer than he is used to from people with neither romantic nor violent intentions. "I just wanted to check if you're okay," she says.

"Why shouldn't I be?"

She scoffs and drawls, "Because you are jumpy— _and_ you just cut up two guys."

"Cutting up bodies feels medical. Like surgery instead of mutilation."

"But stuff evolves when you look at it, in a gruesome way."

"I have control over that now. I had a neurological disease. It's cured."

Her eyes flicker, considering him. "I thought you were crazy back then in my dad's antler room and… before—that you were mad. I was so afraid of you, but I'm not anymore, you know."

The second it takes for Will to formulate a reply, her face stills, eyes staring up at him, not moving. It is the curve of her eyebrow above them, the look of gauging before the jump, that brings them both back into the morgue to that moment when she gutted him. The knife, switching hands from Will to her and that exact same stare of artificial innocence—the stab of the blade into his stomach. Nothing of that has changed, only what happens after: her shocked and hectic breathing, the eyes opened to circles, forehead rutted, never comes. Blade slowly curving downward, her face stays unperturbed.

Then she smiles and in comes a slant of sunlight from the glass facade, catching her cheek—and the morgue is gone. "You're still weird, though. Like what you did just now: staring off into space when you're talking with someone."

"Sorry, I'm—You were right, I'm exhausted. You must be, too."

He wants to add, 'You just helped Hannibal kill two guys, after all.' He does not know why he stops himself; he is aware he will not disturb her with a reminder. The fear she felt when stabbing Nick Boyle—there is nothing of that in her now.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo, here's another chapter to celebrate the end of this show! Also, if you like fics that are alternatives to the past season or just generally good Hannibal fic, please check out my friend's fic [ Leftovers ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3773440/chapters/8385973).

 

Hannibal comes inside through the back door a few minutes later. He praises Will for his clean cuts, but lectures him on the treatment of blood: "Bleeding the cattle preserves the blood for cooking and keeps the meat tasting fresh." He immediately brushes off the apology Will offers. 

The day proceeds with a quick lunch of salad with a poached egg and continues into frailty as the afternoon approaches and Will is, for the first time, left to his own devices. He cannot rid himself of the memory of his first summer camp and its few hours without supervision—the listlessness of just doing whatever. It is an inappropriate comparison; Hannibal is not his supervisor and he is not here to have fun. Outside, the clouds have cleared into thin strips and the air has warmed to mild spring temperatures, so he excuses himself into the woods. Navigating forests feels as natural as tracing the lines of his palm. The smell of growing leaves, the rustling of animals in the brushwork, the chirping of birds take him back to Virginia. The German forest seems safer, less savage: paths are cut through the woods and signs detail the direction of trails. American forests dared him to get lost, this one leads him back home. 

Their cabin lies in a valley, so the path he takes rises in curves. He follows them for a while, the neat back and forth of planned path-making, until he gets bored. Above him, conifers pierce into the sky like spears, the rich color of their evergreen leaves the tight silhouette of a military uniform. Testing the soil with his foot, he decides to take the direct way up by crossing the serpentines. The ground is littered with roots and rocks, so his feet get a good hold and, panting heavily, he manages to push himself up the steep. Once he has reached a large tree with a thick trunk (a deciduous one with just a shock of green like infant's hair) he sinks down against it and looks into the valley. 

Behind the dotted layers of green and brown and the sky blending down from above, nothing is to see. The cabin has disappeared and he is alone. A gust of wind ruffles the brushwork and carries the sour smell of animals with it. There might be foxes digging nearby, with their jaws snapping at each other in play, backs agile, eyes darting between their mates—like Tier might have wanted to. Something cramps up in him. Yes, he knows this, how carnivore teeth clink and, even better, how to implant them into human jaws and make them look natural. This is what he is in for; every kill he makes will be his brain's prime choice of association and he will live in a crowd of death soon. 

He gets up, brushes the dirt off of his pants and begins the skidding descent without hope of leaving Tier's bones behind.

When he gets home, it is late afternoon and the sun is tinging their cabin bronze. Through the kitchen window, he sees Hannibal's bent head. The dying light his kind to him, smoothing over the ridges in his face and emphasizing his high cheekbones. He catches Will's eyes as he passes by the window. It is his welcoming. 

Shoes off at the mat behind the door, Will makes for the kitchen. 

"How was your hike?" Hannibal asks, this time without lifting his gaze. He his massaging salt into a skinned thigh-piece. 

"Great." Will squeezes past Hannibal to wash his hands in the sink. The water that flows from them is brown. Taking another blob of soap, he says, "I went up the hill in the south west. It's steep—more exhausting than walking over Virginia's flat lands. I went halfway up and when you choose a good spot to sit, the tree crowns hide any sign of civilization."

"I take it you enjoy the solitude."

"Of course I do."

Will turns off the tap and Hannibal starts wrapping the thigh in brown paper. He says, "I considered apologizing for confining you to this life without mundane pleasures and social events. But when I saw you strolling down the path out of the woods your face had lost its worried lines and shadows. It reminded me that these pleasures are your chores."

Hannibal is not hiding his rhetoric, but Will does not mind. "You are suggesting that this is what I have always wanted anyway."

"I am suggesting that this forest with its light and dark and corners and short cuts complements your mind."

The thigh goes into the oven. Then Hannibal takes out a pan, lifts a sheet off of thinly sliced bacon. 

"The fat police officer we killed today," Will says, "what would you have turned him into?"

A splash of olive oil into the heated pan and Hannibal smiles. "I would have widened his jaw until it fit the head of the other one. Between that one's teeth I would have placed their badges."

"A perpetuum mobile of rule preaching."

Hannibal nods finely, turning over the strips of meat. They sizzle and smell like the familiar scents of Will's own kitchen. "What about you?"

Limbless torso, vibrating with unseen wings, mirrors showing Will's own concentrated face. "A fly."

Nothing is said. Will feels the silence as a block of warm air around him. Hannibal is completely entranced by cooking, but not without recognition of Will's fantasy. Only after he has turned off the stove and pulled new ingredients from the fridge, he says, "Is it still buzzing around your brain, Will?"

He considers lying for a second, then recognizes that Hannibal wants the truth. "Oh, they all do. Buzz and growl and screech. I have chambers of horrors in there, but limitless company, too. Twenty four/seven entrance so to speak." 

Hannibal chops the chives in silence, then he asks suddenly, "Any plans for tonight?" 

"I wasn't aware there were activities around here that require plans."

Hannibal ignores his sarcasm. "Have you looked at the books in the living-room? One of the chief reasons of buying this cabin was to have a retreat for reading in solitude."

Will shakes his head.

"We shall after dinner, then. Now, hand me the basil, please."

 

When they eat—meat: crisp then tender and fruit without seeds—Will fights against his nausea until it is replaced with indulgence. But further down he embraces the disgust; it means that in his subconscious he has stayed reasonably sane. Abigail, who spent her afternoon alone in her room, chews all her cuts thoroughly—almost too long for their tenderness. Will observes her fingering the bracelet whenever her hands are not occupied with cutting. She says that she checked the weather report on the internet. Will jerks to attention. They have internet?—he did not consider he might be granted that connection to his old life. Immediately, his thoughts go to Alana and Jack—and Freddy. If there were news already, Hannibal would have told him. Or he might have deemed it interesting to let Will discover the information for himself. 

For the rest of meal, they discuss the weather. Abigail excitedly details what she has read about days and days of pouring rain. 

 

"The weather report sure is an argument for indoor activities," Will says, standing in front of the bookshelves. The top row consists of a lexicon with several volumes and old editions of non-fiction works that are all printed in the same format. Below, novels and critical literature are tightly lined up from board to board; only on the far right is a gap, which is filled by a stag-shaped bookend. Hannibal is hovering next to Will, concentrated and in profile, scanning the shelves the way a pianist reconsiders his sheet music before playing. 

"Our fugitive state is, too," Hannibal jokes, earning a chuckle. 

"Do you have any suggestions or should I just choose?"

Hannibal inclines his head and gestures at the books, which Will takes as an invitation to start the search. 

Many of the titles are German, some Italian, some French. Will recognizes the names of many authors, but not the titles of their books; he guesses Hannibal has chosen a special, lesser known selection. The few english volumes he does find are a translation of Bashô's haikus, poetry by Dickinson, Shakespeare's _The Tempest_ (with gilt edge) and Thoreau's _Walden_ , which was already offered to and rejected by Abigail. 

"I'm afraid I won't be able to read many of these," Will says, fingers lingering on something called _Faserland._

"Might I suggest something, then?"

Will raises his brows. Hannibal bends down and pulls from the row next to the fireplace a small, dark blue book bound in cloth. Silently, he hands it to Will. 

" _Der Steppenwolf_?" he asks, embarrassed by the starkness of his own accent. Still, it does not take much knowledge of German to guess the title to mean 'wolf of the steppe'.

"I think you will enjoy this book. Have you ever read Hesse?"

Will shakes his head. He has heard of the name, but he has never been an avid reader of classical foreign literature. "Do you expect me to master the German language in the few days the rainy weather will corral us in here, or…?"

"Of course not. I will translate it for you."

Will makes a face. "Live—directly from the page?"

"I will try."

Will does not doubt Hannibal's ability to do all of anything; he won't _try,_ he will simply do it—to perfection, but it annoys him.

"Tell me what it's about first," he says.

Hannibal hums quietly in consideration. "It's the love story of human and monster; staged inside one man's breast."

With a slight frown, Will again looks down at the book, fingers brushing over its rough binding. "Let's try it, then…" he mumbles. 

Suddenly the door opens and Abigail stands in the room, wearing her jacket. Will lowers the book.

"We should go out," she exclaims, thumb pointing at the door. "The night is so clear, you can see all the stars."

 

The darkness outside is as dense as it last was around Will's house in Virginia. Will's coat is too thin for the sudden cold, but Hannibal and Abigail do not seem to feel it, walking briskly along the road and pointing at different constellations in the sky between the branches. Abigail wants to know all stories that they can remember about the stars' mythological conceptions, so Will crams his brain under Hannibal's courteous silence, tells tales of Cassiopeia and Orion, until a fat drop of rain hits his cheek and they hurry back home. 

 

The real rain storm comes later than promised. The morning of the following day is overcast and chilly, but dry. Will and Abigail spend it hiking through the woods while Hannibal keeps to himself at the cabin. They gather again for their meals; soup from bone, small steaks on salad; the bodies in the freezer will last them a while. Hannibal's elation vibrates through every meal. At night, Will's thoughts cling to Baltimore and the people there, but his hands feel stiff and he cannot bring himself to take out his phone and do research. Later that night, he wakes up to the thrumming of rain on the triangular roof. Beneath it, he hears quiet, quiet breathing. 

By midday, the rain is chased sideways by a howling wind, pelting against the sides of the cabin. The trees are bending, branches snapping off by the storm's force, the leaves now not rustling gently anymore, but seething. They switch all the lamps on. At two in the afternoon, Will confuses the atmosphere with night. Yellow shadows splay over Abigail as she stretches out on the couch beneath a floor lamp, holding a book like a roof over her head. Will casts occasional glances at her when a particularly violent gust hits the cabin, but she seems not to acknowledge them.

On the second day, the storm holds up. Abigail is getting bored and Will restless. He paces through the rooms until he comes up behind Hannibal, who is working his way through a volume of psychological specialist literature. Without looking up from the page, he takes two books from a pile to reveal _Steppenwolf_.  

Hannibal pours them both a glass of red wine before they sink into the soft cushions of the sofa. His legs crossed casually, he holds the book open with both hands. The patter of the rain sounds to Will like the hushed murmuring before a sermon.

"This novel starts with a preface by the publisher," Hannibal begins. He fingers the pages for a moment, his lips pursed lightly. He glances at Will, then focuses back on the words.

" _This book contains the records left us by a man whom, according to the expression he often used himself, we called the Steppenwolf. Whether this manuscript needs any introductory remarks may be open to question. I, however, feel the need of adding a few pages to those of the Steppenwolf in which I try to record my recollections of him. What I know of him is little enough. Indeed, of his past life and origins I know nothing at all. Yet the impression left by his personality has remained, in spite of all, a deep and sympathetic one._ "

Hannibal's intonation is rhythmic, his voice with its sibilating accent soft. He tells the story of a man who lives in isolated loneliness because he is both sympathetic to and alienated by those around him. Will looks at Hannibal's concentrated, orating face, drawn in by his way of speaking and held by his affirmative glances. The preface winds onwards over the Steppenwolf's love for literature, his vices, and reclusive life. When he disappears one day, a manuscript is left for the publisher—words that will tells his own story of grappling with his soul. "They mean," Hannibal relates, "literally, a journey through hell, a sometimes fearful, sometimes courageous journey through the chaos of the world whose souls dwell in darkness, a journey undertaken with the determination to go through hell from one end to the other, to give battle to chaos, and to suffer torture to the full." Will feels himself slowly sink into the backrest. 

"It's late," Hannibal says. For a moment, Will attributes the expression to the wolf. 

"Oh, yes, is it?" He is tired and slightly embarrassed of the fact, so he straightens himself, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "That is an interesting book," he says, taking another look at its small blue form in Hannibal's hands. 

"Glad you like it. Shall we continue another time then?"

Will nods. "I'd love to."

He takes the last sip of his wine and retreats to his couch bed. 

The storm does not cease that night and barges into Will's dream of two ships on the sea, turning its ripples into raging waves. His eyes fly open before the ships crash. 

After a breakfast under the drop-light, Hannibal tells them that the storm is to last for two more days—longer than originally predicted—and that they are running low on fresh food. There are some canned goods in the wall cupboards, but those can, of course, under no circumstances be paired with the delicacies they still have waiting in the freezer. Only one option remains: making the drive through the pouring rain to Freudenstadt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All parts from Steppenwolf are taken from Joseph Mileck's revised edition of Basil Creighton's translation.
> 
> And a shout out with Faserland to all my hometown girls!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one! And stuff finally... happens. At least kind of.

Rainy evenings in their cabin used to be her favorite. Abigail's mom would make tea and her dad let her choose a board game to play. She thought of the little human-shaped tokens as actual people, tapping them against the board with every step she had them make. The rules of the games allowed her to forget the reality outside them—that inside the pillows she was slouching against while contemplating her next move was the dark hair of girls that looked just like her. Now she leans her head against the car window and traces the dots of a game board onto the foggy glass. 

With his voice raised over the rumbling of the motor and the whipping of rain and wind, Hannibal explains to her that they will park directly next to a supermarket so they won't have to be out for long. He's packed his best umbrella, anyway. 

The building they arrive in front of is painted green and has the word 'Biomarkt' printed above the entrance. Hannibal stops the car and takes a moment before opening the door to catch her eyes with a glimmer in this.

"Time to run," he says.

Not that he does. He takes the umbrella from the back seat and holds it through the door to open it as a second roof. Swiftly, he steps beneath it. Abigail scoffs and flits from the car, the rain a short wash of cold, then she's behind the automatic doors of the supermarket. Hannibal follows with an approving expression. She smiles faintly at the basket she takes from a stack. 

There is only one other person in the store, an old man with a hunched back, beside the chubby female cashier. Hannibal seems relaxed; he's wearing his fringe combed over his eyes and the collar of his rain jacket cuts off the lower part of his face.

Strolling through the vegetable aisle, Abigail asks,

"Do you think Will is bored without us?"

In the process of picking out shallots from a basket, Hannibal seems not to have heard her. But having put six into a paper bag, he says, "Will savors his time alone. Spending it with other people in such a small space as ours is new for him and, to a degree, discomforting."

She grunts in response. "He says his neurological disorder is cured. But sometimes you still catch him staring like that—" she makes a comically shocked face—"into the air."

"The inflammation of his brain bears no correlation with who he is as a person, Abigail."

"I don't think that's true."

Hannibal doesn't reply and instead turns his attention to the carrots. Boiling for a moment, Abigail exhales, then changes aisle to grab two liters of milk. There are little frolicking cows on the packaging. 

The rest of the shopping time they spend in different corners of the store, mechanically collecting every item on their lists. Only when she's queued up behind Hannibal, she realizes she's forgotten something. 

"I have to go to the drugstore across the street real quick," she tells him and hands him her basket. 

Fortunately, the rain has abated, although not stopped entirely, as she makes her way across the parking lot. Once inside the store, she rearranges the side braid of her damp hair. She scans the signs hanging above the shelves for the 'female hygiene' one—there, directly in broad center of the store. 

But just as she's flung three boxes of tampons into her basket, she spots a head of dark hair tall above the racks that turns and stares at her. She does a double take—it's the guy from the jewelry stall. He lifts a hand and waves and starts in her direction. 

"Hey, remember me?" he says, while audaciously pulling his tight black jeans up. 

"Sure. You sold me this bracelet."

She jiggles her wrist and he watches the bracelet dance (she doesn't miss his furtive glance at her tampons) before fumbling in his pocket for his phone. Once it's out, he lets it rotate in his hand. 

"So you still like it?" he asks.

"I do, I love it." 

There is an awkward pause. 

Abigail tries again,"Um, so do you live around here?"

" _Everyone_ live just," he makes a circle with his finger, "around. There aren't so many houses. What about you? You said you just moved…?"

"Oh, we live outside of town."

"Yeah? Where?"

She doesn't answer for a moment but he bores into her with his light blue eyes. They have little wrinkles at the corners despite looking so young. "Just… outside," she says finally, angry at failing to lie convincingly. "I don't know my way around that well yet."

He smirks. "I could show you, if you…"

So this is where this is going, she thinks and how she doesn't want to stay inside that cabin any longer than she needs.  This is her backdoor exit. But Will's overprotective warning against socializing unshakably clings to her.

"Or does your dad not want that you hang out with the strange punk guys?" 

Despite herself, she laughs. It's not even funny, but that he sees her as a daddy's girl strikes her as absurd and frighteningly accurate at the same time. 

"Should I give you my number, then?" she asks through a smile.

"Yeah, _and,_ " he says, "your name."

Exchanging numbers, she finds out his name, too. It's Richard, but he says it in a way she thinks she'll never be able to: with that weird German consonant in the middle that sounds like a child imitating the hiss of a cat. When he asks for hers, she almost betrays herself, but quickly spits out, "Eve." Now there are three people in her phone. It feels a little less like a petty plaything. 

About to say goodbye, a stroke of lightning flashes through the store. They both flinch. While thunder rolls immediately after, they stare at the sudden torrent behind the glass door. 

"Oh, _naja_ ," Richard sighs, looking at her with a shrug. "Can I bring you home?"

"The car is parked outside on the lot, so…"

"Then to the car?"

She turns up her hands. "Yeah, sure. Just let me pay for this."

So she goes to the cash register while he waits next to the door. 

"Where's your umbrella?" she asks, but he shakes his head and unzips his jacket. 

"I just have this."

She considers him, the jacket, this whole situation, with raised brows, then steps with him toward the automatic door, which opens to a wet, howling gust, and lets him span the jacket over their heads. He's so tall she is almost tugged under his arm as they haste over the parking lot, unseeing, blinking against the drops in her eyes. Her socks become wetter with every splash through the puddles and he keeps asking, "Okay, okay, okay?" and she just tries to nod amidst the fabric of his shirt that her head is stuck against. "There's the car," she yells over another clap of thunder. Through the slits of her eyes she thinks she can make out Hannibal's dark shadow behind the water-striped window. He wouldn't appreciate her bringing strangers into proximity. But there's no way she'll get out of this headlock.

"My car," she finally huffs when she's steered them to it. 

They stop a few feet in front of it. "Are you sure?" He ducks his head. "That doesn't look like your dad inside."

"That's my… other dad."

Richard makes a surprised but approving noise. "Cool," he says. Abigail doesn't correct his assumption; it's not like she knows if there _is_ anything to correct.

"I need to go—we're getting wet," she says, turning out from under his arm and into the rain. She raises her hand, about to say another vapid farewell, when a quick look of wonder flashes over his face. His smile is back immediately, but his eyes linger on the side of her face. She lifts her fingers to her head and—a sharp intake of breath—her hands fumble to pull on her hair. Her braid has come undone. The hole in her head gapes—her heart starts hammering.

"I'll see you then!" he exclaims. "I'll call you!"

She's frozen for a moment, then in flight. Without a response, she's rounded the car, torn open the door, and slams herself into the seat. "Let's go home," she orders, not looking at Hannibal.

Silently, he starts the motor and backs out of the parking spot. Her heart beats and beats and beats. He took her ear off without pain. He never showed her the knife. There was a sedative, making her slow—her brain, her heart. Her body was refused the fear that it should have felt, but it comes back. She knows he wants her to forget—or better yet!—make it a nonchalant memory like that time she dropped her ice cream cone onto the sand, in the banal middle ground between traumatic and forgettable, but she won't. 

She braids her hair with vigor and holds the ends tightly because her hair tie is gone. 

Halfway through the journey of staring at the hypnotic movements of the windshield wiper, Hannibal finally speaks.

"An absence can be more valuable than a material thing in its place, Abigail," he says quietly. "The way you cut the umbilical chord of a newborn: it is now its own person and only that way it can continue to be its mother's child. Your loss has facilitated the growth of this family—and your relationship with Will. There's no need to be ashamed."

It's more the sound of his voice than his words that soothe her, but she nods and leans her head against the window. Hannibal's crooked forefinger comes up against her face, gently stroking her cheek.

 

____

 

 

When Hannibal and Abigail come dripping through the door, Will is still holding his phone in his hand. His jaw is working fast. He has turned solid, a pillar in the corridor; like Lot's wife he could not refrain from turning around and looking back. 

Jack is dead. It's all over the news. 

"This storm is of biblical magnitude," Hannibal says, peeling himself out of his jacket. The words reach Will's ears only with delay and he does not react. Looking at Will, Hannibal's amused expression slowly transforms into one of concern. "Did something happen, Will?"

He cannot help himself, even though he should not be surprised; grieving, shaken, yes, but the shock should not be his. 

"Jack is dead." His voice has the taste of old paper, his tongue foreign.

There is a gap of silence. Abigail, previously fumbling with her coat and a hanger by the door, slowly turns around, her face unreadable. It is as if the corridor is in the process of elongating, the panels of the walls multiplying and the floor stretching faster than Will could run against it. He sees Abigail and Hannibal small in the distance—like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. And in Hannibal's eyes, so far away, is a glimmer of knowledge. 

Will exhales a shaky, spiteful breath. "You knew, didn't you?" he spits, glaring at that tiny half moon face. 

"Will," Hannibal says calmly. Will's eyes only recognize shapes; they blink against the storm. Everything is a haze, Abigail's face made up of two blue circles, eyes scared and wide open. No, she does not grieve Jack—she hated him—but hell, does she fear a falling out. 

"Stop keeping vital information from me, Hannibal." He barks a laugh at his own choice of words. "Stop refusing me grief."

Hannibal's eyes close in slow motion. "I'm sorry. But…" He exhales, frowning. Will has never seen Hannibal interrupt himself—a moment to savor. 

Will does not have a reply; he only feels the backwards motion of the floor and the hate burning towards Hannibal; misdirected, he knows, because they are both responsible for the death; Hannibal by stabbing, Will by handing over the knife. It does not lessen the anger or the pain. 

Tock, tock, tock—his eyes refocus—he hears footfalls over the parquet. Despite its rapid growth, Abigail crosses the corridor without recognizable effort and, with an impact that instantaneously presses the air from Will's lungs, their chests collide and she wraps her arms around him. Without hesitation, his own follow suit. 

The corridor retracts its walls, bringing Hannibal to stand only a few feet away, but Will loses sight of him as he buries his head with a spur of embarrassment in Abigail's hair. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm really sorry, I'm sorry he's dead." She feels so small and frail in his embrace and her hair is wet against his face; behind it her cheek glows from the chill outside and he feels the scars of her missing ear—but they do not matter anymore. Jack is dead. He is lying on a steel tray or inside a casket in the cold, but Abigail cannot escape his arms, warm and with an erratic heart. A life lost a life gained; _gained_ : his daughter's life.

Reluctantly, he lets Abigail go after the first wave of grief has subsided and he has gotten control over himself again. He gives her a meek smile. "Thank you," he murmurs and she smiles back. 

Then he turns to Hannibal, who stands almost redundantly beside them. Shaking his head, he says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have attacked you."

Hannibal suddenly looks desolate; lines run like gouges along his forehead. "We share the blame, Will. We should remember that. Do you feel guilty?"

"Of course. Strikingly."

 "Blame does not necessarily mean guilt—blame lets us keep the spirit of an old friend alive, guilt restricts memory to trauma."

"Bella has been dying of cancer for months, but now she got to outlive her own husband. Do you really not feel any guilt, Hannibal?"

"I feel sorry. Not guilty. I don't regret, Will."

The look in Hannibal's eyes is genuine. Will lowers his head in confusion, too exhausted to feel angry.

In the thin-aired pause that follows, Abigail speaks, disembodied like a narrator's voice,

"Does that mean Doctor Bloom is still alive?"

Will nods in her direction. "Yes. According to the news, she's in a coma. The, uh, long drop down from the window has caused a severe concussion and apparently, they aren't sure yet if her spine is damaged. But they are optimistic."

Color blooms in Abigail's cheeks; the skin beneath her jaw flutters with her rapid pulse. As a reply, she just nods. Her hands have been spared the layer of another murder. And Will suddenly feels the relief, too—they were all saved from this kill.

"What this means, though," Will says, "is that when she wakes up your status might be compromised, Abigail."

"You mean that she will remember that it was me who"—she jerks her head—"pushed her."

"You will be on all the big lists then, too. You won't be dead anymore."

"The chances that Alana will remember are thin," Hannibal says. "She saw you for a few seconds only, after which immediately followed a strike to the head and probable damage to the vertebrae. And apart from the physical impediments she will also suffer from severe shock, which often prevents patients from remembering the accident and its lead up. I'm optimistic."

Will nods slowly and Abigail's face stays blank for an instance, then she smiles. "I'd like to be dead a bit longer," she says.

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I still exist. Hi.

 

The weather clears over the next days but Will's grief does not. While standing in the kitchen, cutting vegetables, he catches Hannibal's wistful eyes—Will wishes he could accuse him of hypocrisy but he is too well versed in the unregretting sadness that lingers even after an own kill. In one of the drawers he finds a knife and once the rain behind the house is only dripping down from the canopy, he sits on a tree stump and carves branches into blunt spear heads. He is not used to killing time just for killing's sake, the absence of the urgency that comes with working on a case or the constant rehashing of information and realignment of connections. He would burn this spring's stagnant time—but it is too wet a spring for that. 

Hannibal uses their evenings for reading— _Steppenwolf_ is engaging and, told in Hannibal's murmur, almost mystical. The long descriptions of emotional isolation touch Will so personally that, one night, with his wine glass still half full in his hand, he turns his face into the couch and sighs, "God, I miss Jack." Hannibal takes his free hand and says, "Me too."

 

—

 

When April comes it does not breed lilacs: the weather has stabilized to a monotone of wind and cold and the air still smells like winter. 

With his feet propped up on the coffee table and his glasses perched on his nose, Will is trying get a list of German verbs into his head, when Hannibal comes in through the front door and sets two bags down next to him on the table. "We need some exercise, Will," he announces. 

A brow comes up over the frame of Will's glasses. "Are you suggesting we take up jogging?" And with a glance at the bags, "You bought us matching outfits, didn't you?"

Hannibal chuckles, but says, "This is in fact hiking gear."

" _You_ want—" he has to correct himself to not sound so baffled, "you want to go on a hike into the woods?"

"You do. And I want to accompany you."

Will discovers once he is sifting through the purchases that there is a third set of gear for Abigail. But as he tells her about their plans for the day she shrugs in reply, lifting her book and making big eyes at him. "I'd really rather stay inside. It's so cold out." Will does not press the matter, too excited about the day ahead. They prepare some food to take along (Hannibal has roasted some meat that makes a great filling for sandwiches), pack their bags and change into the new gear. Hannibal looks suave albeit slightly ridiculous and Will feels at home with his sturdy boots and a rucksack on his back. 

Not only has Hannibal been shopping, he has also researched the best hiking routes. They get into the car and drive south where the mountains rise higher and the roads lead along scenic valleys. They park the car and begin the ascent. 

 

—

 

The door clicked shut about half an hour ago and since then Abigail hasn't moved from her position on the bed. Now her head is turned sideways on the pillow, one ear perked up: she thinks she heard a cellphone jingle. It isn't something she's used to hearing anymore. Maybe it's a hallucination—the wish for social interaction that conjures the memory of that sound. She's heard of that.

Lazily she gets up, putting _Vanity Fair_ face down onto her bed and heads to the living room where her cell lies on a table where it is permanently charging. Climbing over the couch, she hears it jingle again.With a frown she turns it over. 

_Richard_

_12:14_

_hey, do you have time today?_

_12:16_

_No? I thought we can go sight seeing…_

She had forgotten about him—not about the look on his face when he saw her ear, but the fact that they wanted to hang out. There's this conviction she deems probably unreasonable that her missing ear transformed this relationship from casual to weird. But the opportunity strikes her as so very convenient. He could be her ride into town. She writes him back and his text comes only a few seconds later. "Shall I pick you up?" he asks, but of course that is out of the question. She'll walk a kilometer to the nearest _Landstraße_ where she will wait for him. He sends her an array of unrelated emojis in return. 

 

Before leaving she ties a scarf around her neck and fastens her side braid with twelve bobby pinks. Around one PM they meet at the side of the road. He zooms around the corner in a family VW—probably not his own choice of car. 

"Hey," he says, leaning over to throw the passenger door open. "How is it going?"

It's the same old car ride into town, not long, not short and not very interesting. Abigail makes up an excuse about why he couldn't pick her up at home—her dads don't like her seeing guys. It's not a lie. 

There's a pause in the conversation; Richard doesn't seem very keen on talking, bobbing his head to the radio (something by Pink Floyd) and Abigail, sitting to his right, tries not to fumble with her hair. She repeatedly glances at him, but he seems disinterested with her lack of ear. 

"Where are we going?" she asks finally as the familiar rooftops come into sight. 

Richard hums. "Freudenstadt doesn't have a lot to offer, but maybe… the church? You already know the market, right?"

"Yeah. It's a nice market, though. Much nicer than anything we had back in the US. It must be cool to work there."

He makes a face. "You stop noticing it after a while. I'm sure even the people working at the, I don't know, Niagara Falls stopped noticing its beauty."

"It's not even that beautiful anymore—so many people: tourists. I went there once with my parents."

"Tourists are the worst. Even here."

"Not that many whre I'm from."

"Yeah, why?"

"Because it was desolate."

His eyes glint at her mockingly. "Nice."

They stop in a backstreet and walk the rest of the way to the church. It is pretty inside and almost empty. With its cream walls and colorless windows it looks cozily rural. Richard tells her it's evangelical, but that's where his sentence drifts off. It's obvious that that's all he knows. "Sorry, I'm not religious," he grumbles. 

"Neither am I," Abigail says.

After that, they walk through the main streets for a while. Richard points out buildings and the occasional statue, but he doesn't really know much about them and seems more interested in looking at Abigail from the corner of his eye. Suddenly, he whirls around in the middle of the street. "Is this boring?" he asks with his broad mouth pursed, looking like the statue of a frog they just passed.

"Kind of."

"Yeah, thought so. Sorry, this town is… _Man will hier nicht tot über'm Zaun hängen_ …" You wouldn't want to be dead and hanging on a fence here. "You know. It's a German saying you should learn. You say that when a place is just a shit hole."

Abigail laughs. "Sounds important to remember. Although I _would_ actually hang on a fence here. It's not that bad."

He smiles and thinks for a moment. Then he says, "Well, while we're still alive, we should do better things than sight seeing. There's not much to do, but… there's a cinema around, they show, like, indie films _und so_ …"

It's just a ten minute walk away, in a historical building behind a row of trees. 

"What kind of films do you like?" Abigail asks, picking at the bobby pins in her hair.

"Scifi and horror. Like aliens and splatter and gore. You?"

"Yeah, me too…" She liked watching Disney movies with her friends back in Minnesota. Now she watches shows with at least six seasons on her phone because they don't have a TV.

Looking at the posters of the current films, Richard makes a wonky victory dance, exacerbated by the lankiness of his limbs. " _Under the Skin_. I wanted to see that for really long. Do you…?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

Richard buys both tickets and popcorn, refusing to let her pay. She doesn't like to be treated, but she doesn't know how these social conventions work in Germany—and if this means that they're on a date. She doesn't mind either way. They are a bit late, so they hurry to their seats. The theatre is small and looks more like an _actual_ theatre with its ornamented armchairs than a cinema. There is no time to talk once they've sat down because the lights dim immediately and strange local commercials start playing. Only now does Abigail realize that the movie will be in German—and that hers is far from advanced enough to be able to understand the whole thing. Annoyed, she leans back in her seat and starts picking at the bobby pins again; they are digging into her scalp. Another glance at Richard—completely immersed in the commercials and shoveling popcorn into his mouth—and she decides the darkness of the theatre will hide her scars, so she pulls pin after pin from of her hair.

 


End file.
